Foundations Reading 10B

Chap 20

Reading 10B WHEN WEIRD WEATHER STRIKES Most of us know about hurricanes, droughts, and floods. But from time to time, nature delivers a weather event that is really unusual. One day in 2005, people in a small town in Serbia saw an unusual sight. It was raining frogs! Without any warning, they found their streets filling with the little jumping creatures. "There were thousands of them," one person told a local newspaper. "I thought perhaps a plane carrying frogs had exploded," said another. Scientists believe a tornado passed over a lake and sucked up the frogs. It then dropped them on the town, far away. As if tornadoes aren't dangerous enough, some can actually be made of fire. When a wildfire reaches very high temperatures, it causes the air to heat up and then rise. Cooler air moves quickly to replace the hot air. This creates strong winds, which suck up the fire. When this happens—like it did in 2014, in Denver, United States—a fire tornado is created. A tornado like this can become 15 meters wide and grow as tall as a 40-story building. In 1942, hundreds of thousand-year-old skeletons were found under the ice of Lake Roopkund in the Himalayas. Many had holes in their skulls—but they weren't hurt in any other way. For years, the cause of their deaths was a mystery. Today, scientists think they were killed by giant hailstones. Hailstones are balls of ice that form when raindrops turn into ice. The ice pieces increase in size until the wind cannot hold them up. This results in hailstones falling to the ground, often at speeds of over 160 kilometers an hour. For the unlucky people at Lake Roopkund, there was nowhere to run.

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