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Free Weather quiz: 79 trivia questions and answers — storms, clouds & records. Easy to hard, with explained answers. No sign-up.
Start this quiz →🖨️ Printable version (20 questions + answers)
From clouds to rainbows, from tornadoes to hurricanes, the weather fascinates as much as it puzzles. This quiz explores measuring instruments, the great phenomena of the atmosphere, temperature records and the figures who gave birth to forecasting. Can you tell a cumulonimbus from a cirrus?
This quiz currently has 79 questions, ranging from easy to hard, available in French, English and Spanish when the Spanish translation is available.
Warm up before the quiz with these 15 trivia questions and their explained answers: click a question to reveal the answer.
Answer: The barometer. The barometer measures air pressure, expressed in hectopascals (hPa): a falling reading often signals worsening weather.
Answer: The United States. The United States sees about 1,200 tornadoes a year, mostly across the Great Plains' "Tornado Alley", where warm air from the Gulf of Mexico meets cold air from the north.
Answer: In mid-May. Saints Mamertus, Pancras and Servatius, celebrated on 11, 12 and 13 May, are said to bring a last cold snap: gardeners traditionally wait until they have passed before planting tender crops.
Answer: Stable, dry, often sunny weather. An anticyclone is a high-pressure area where air sinks, which prevents clouds from forming. One nuance: in winter it can also trap cold, fog and pollution near the ground.
Answer: Isobars. The closer together they are, the stronger the wind. Isotherms join points of equal temperature.
Answer: The strength of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, which can burn the skin. From 6 upwards, sun protection becomes essential; above 11, the risk is extreme. It can be high even when cloudy, and rises with altitude.
Answer: Air humidity. Relative humidity shows how much water vapour the air holds compared with the maximum possible at that temperature.
Answer: Cirrus. Found at around 8 to 12 km altitude, cirrus clouds are sometimes nicknamed "mares' tails".
Answer: The Beaufort scale. The Beaufort scale was devised in 1805 by British naval officer Francis Beaufort to estimate wind force from its effects on the sea and on a ship's sails.
Answer: In Death Valley, California. On 10 July 1913, the Furnace Creek station in Death Valley recorded 56.7 °C, a record recognised by the WMO; the 58 °C attributed to El Azizia (Libya) in 1922 was invalidated in 2012.
Answer: Urbain Le Verrier. After the storm of 14 November 1854, which sank many Allied ships in the Black Sea, Urbain Le Verrier, director of the Paris Observatory, organised an observation network linked by telegraph: one of the origins of the French weather service.
Answer: Anticlockwise. This is an effect of the Earth's rotation (the Coriolis force). In the Southern Hemisphere it is the other way round. However, the idea that your sink drains in a different direction depending on the hemisphere is a myth: a basin is far too small for the effect to matter.
Answer: A human hair. A hair lengthens when the air is humid and shortens when it is dry. Saussure turned this property into a measuring instrument. It also explains why on some rainy days your hairstyle does whatever it likes!
Answer: The autan. Warm, dry and sometimes violent, it can blow for several days in a row. It is also called 'the wind of madmen'. The mistral and tramontane blow from the north.
Answer: Huracán. The Spanish borrowed the word from the Taíno of the Antilles, who used it for the god of storms; it is also found among the Maya. Tlaloc was the Aztec rain god.
64 more questions are waiting for you in the quiz!