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Weather & Meteorology
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Snow & Ice
Current Snow Cover - So you think you're sick of shoveling the snow out of your parents' driveway? See where kids have it worse than you do! Check out how deep the snow is today, all over the U.S., with this snow cover map. Hint: This map is very boring to look at in the summer.
Kids Snow Page - If you lived in the frozen North, you might have as many different words for snow as the Inuit do. There are words that mean falling snow, ground snow, smoky snow, and wind-beaten snow. Do you live in a snowy climate? Go on a scavenger hunt activity! Use the list of all the different kinds of snow and see how many you can find where you live. If you'd like to keep your snowflake finds, learn how you can do it with a piece of glass and some hair spray. Make an edible glacier, cut and fold paper snowflakes, and learn that soap bubbles won't pop if you blow them outside when it's -40 degrees Fahrenheit, as it is pretty often where the Teel family kids live--in Alaska.
National Ice Center - Where does the sea ice end? Where are icebergs in the North Atlantic? Someone's tracking it all these days, largely as a result of that famous maritime disaster: the 1912 sinking of the Titanic . North Atlantic icebergs are tracked only during the "season" (it's variable, but it's usually 100 to 200 days in spring to midsummer), so you may not see a current map when you visit the Icebergs area of this site.
U.S. Coast Guard International Ice Patrol - According to this site, "10,000 to 15,000 icebergs are calved each year, primarily from 20 major glaciers between the Jacobshaven and Humboldt Glaciers" in west Greenland. These drift south, melting as they go. Sometimes they reach the shipping lanes, and in the old days this was a cause for great concern. Historical reports indicate that the iceberg that sank the Titanic was 50 to 100 feet high and 200 to 400 feet long. These days, icebergs are located by radar and carefully tracked, and one of the organizations responsible for that is the U.S. Coast Guard. Find out about their activities at this site. Don't miss the other links to their icebreaker vessels, the Polar Sea , the Polar Sta r, and the Healy . You can sometimes correspond with the crews via e-mail. There are also links to Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers and information on their operations.
Weather Gone Wild - Sometimes the weather gets a little out of hand. Tornadoes, hurricanes, tidal waves, and floods are just a few of the extreme weather situations detailed at this site. Each entry is easy to read, but if you don't understand some of the words, don't worry because there is a glossary. There's a nice tutorial on how to read a weather chart, with an explanation of all those weird symbols used by weather guys and gals. This site was created by students for the ThinkQuest Junior competition.
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