Meteorology True or False

Fair-weather waterspouts will not, but atmospheric conditions beneficial to tornadic activity can sustain a waterspout over land.

This myth was propagated by a survivor who attributed their success to this maneuver. In reality, it was a combination of luck and is a great example of survivorship bias.

Heat lightning is no different than ordinary lightning. The difference here is that the observer is usually too far away to hear thunder and that it often occurs in the evenings when light scattering can hide the clouds in haze.

See Buys Ballot's Law. The opposite is true in the southern hemisphere. Technically, it's not at a right angle to your torso, you need to add about 30° to make it accurate due to friction.

This can differ based on the state of the atmosphere, but generally every 5 seconds between the flash and thunder is 1 mile.

A water vapor molecule has at atomic weight of 18 and atmospheric oxygen is 32, meaning that all else being equal, the more saturated air is less dense.

This is why lightning rods were invented. otherwise, once your building was struck once, you would never need another one.

High pressure is synonymous with fair weather, usually, and causes are to sink and become stable. Because pollutants can no longer escape, the setting sun has more molecules to refract off of when the high pressure is from the west. The opposite is true in the morning where a red sky means that the high pressure has passed to the east.

The clouds are called pyrocumulus or flammgenitus.

Unless your house is a vacuum, this isn't going to make a difference. Always seek shelter first, and don't stop to open your windows.

This is often attributed to the Coriolis Force but the Coriolis Force only has appreciable changes over very long distances. The angle of the jets of your toilet have far more impact.

Known as Dolbear's Law, count the amount of chirps in 14 seconds and add 40 for the temperature in Fahrenheit.

There are plenty of examples of tornadoes in large cities. Three touched down in New York City in 20120.

While the wind can be dangerous, most deaths and damage occur due to flooding.

Weird to think about, huh?