The Truth Behind Six Persistent Weather Myths, Part II
In Part I of this article, we looked at several weather myths, covering such disparate topics as wind chill factor, ball lightning, and the shapes of raindrops. As simple as these subjects are, they're fraught with misconceptions, so we thought we'd season the discussion with a few facts.
Looking for even more intellectual seasoning in your cognitive diet? Well, if you thought the first three items were interesting, we've got a few more that you may want to consider. Icy, spicy, and otherwise, try these three myths on for size.
Myth 4: Tornadoes never hit big cities.
Think so? Well, you can put this weather myth to rest right now. Your Humble, Lovable Writer was nearby when a tornado tore through downtown Ft. Worth, Texas in March Y2K, so he knows for a fact that this myth is false. The tornado killed four people, injured 89, and caused more than $300 million in damage.
Tornados regularly strike Wichita, Kansas, which has a metro population of almost 500,000, and even larger Oklahoma City as well. Even Miami, Florida got hit (in 1997), and more than 30 tornadoes struck Los Angeles since 1918. St. Louis, Missouri got 22 in the last 40 years.
Myth 5: In hot weather, the air gets thicker and harder to breath.
While this may seem to be true, it's really just another weather myth. Hot air is thinner per unit volume than cool air, because the molecules have more energy and spread out more. Yes, air does get both thinner and colder with altitude, but both factors are due to density; the thinness isn't cause by the temperature.
You can't even blame it on the humidity. Water vapor is lighter than dry air, most of which is made up of bonded pairs of nitrogen or oxygen atoms. While there are three atoms total in water (H2O), those two hydrogen atoms together don't weigh near as much as a single oxygen or nitrogen atom.
Myth 6: No two snowflakes are alike.
This is a quaint little weather myth that just begs you to ask: "how do they know?". How can they possibly have checked the shapes of enough snowflakes to be sure? The simplest (and most accurate) answer is that they can't, and they really haven't.
Here's what we mean. When first systematically researching snow crystals, a famous study published that thousands of snowflake photos showed that no two were alike. But consider this: even thousands is an insignificant sample of the whole universe of snowflakes.
The truth is, there are only a few ways a water crystal can grow, and if grown under the same temperature and humidity, two or more flakes can be virtually identical. Plus, scientists have since captured "wild" snowflakes that look identical to the trained eye.
So don't let this weather myth among the many weather myths we've shown you... well, snow you!
