A 1917 F4 tornado in Connecticut picked up a jar of pickles and dropped it, unbroken, in a ditch 25 miles away.		Harry Norris apparently was a sound sleeper. A tornado threw him out of his bed, through a window, and into the street while he slept.
Nine-year-old Sharon Weron and her horse rode a South Dakota tornado on July 1, 1955. The horse was lifted over a hill, with the girl still riding.		In Canada, a tornado picked up a baby girl from her buggy. After a 10-hour search, the girl was found safe and asleep two miles from where the buggy had been.
The record for the item carried farthest by a tornado is a personal check that traveled 223 miles from Stockton, Kansas, to Winnetoon, Nebraska, in an F3 tornado in 1991.		Dust devils are swirling columns of air full of dust and debris. Sometimes, dust devils suck up flames from nearby forest fires, creating a rope of fire.

Small fish fell in east London in May 1984. Tornadoes sometimes suck up small animals and carry them for miles within the thunderstorm, finally dropping them out in heavy rain.		In 1939, a man was caught in a downpour and ran for cover. When he looked out, he saw large, dark lumps falling. Hundreds of small frogs were coming down with the rain.
Cars can be carried away in only two feet of water on the road.		Raindrops do not look like teardrops. They are usually round and flat.

The deadliest Atlantic hurricane to occur in the 20th century struck Galveston, TX, on September 8, 1900, killing 6,000 people.		The word 'hurricane' comes from Huracan, a Caribbean god of evil.
A hurricane pushed a wall of water 42 feet high into Bathurst Bay, Australia, in 1899.

A cumulus cloud half a mile wide, half a mile long, and half a mile high weighs about 1.5 billion pounds.
 

In June 1996 a ball of lightning the size of a tennis ball flew into a factory in England. It whizzed around inside, sending sparks flying and finally hit a window, exploding with an orange flash and a loud bang.		Although it seems much wider, the electric current channel of a typical lightning bolt is only about the size of a pencil.
While very startling, ball lightning does little damage. It may even float through a glass window without breaking it!		Lightning has been known to strike people talking on the telephone or sitting on the toilet.
Roy Sullivan, A U.S. park ranger, was struck by lightning seven times during his life and lived to tell about each of those strikes!		A bolt of lightning has a temperature around 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is almost 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun.
If you are struck by lightning, your socks and shoes may be knocked off. Sweat on your skin may be dried quickly enough to expand the air between your skin and your clothes rapidly enough to blow your clothes off.

The north half of the earth (called the northern hemisphere), which includes the United States, is closer to the sun during the winter and farthest away from the sun during the summer. Because the north half is tilted toward the sun during the summer even though the earth is farthest from the sun at that time, summer is hotter. In the winter, the earth is closer to the sun but the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun so winter is colder.

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