[Music]
If you're like me, you know what your perfect day looks like
-- weather-wise: sunny, rainy, snowy, whatever.
Personally, I love it when it's cool and cloudy, like just cold enough to wear a sweater.
You probably know that weather has something to do with how hot or cold it is outside.
But really, there's a lot more to it than just temperature.
So grab your sunglasses, your rain boots, and your most colorful scarf,
because today, we're talking weather.
Let's start with a big and pretty basic question: What exactly is weather?
Well, weather is the condition of the air or the atmosphere on our planet,
but the thing is, even though there's only one atmosphere on Earth,
the weather isn't the same all over the world.
There are many different factors that can change the atmosphere in a certain area,
and together, they determine what the weather is like
from one minute and one from place to the next.
These factors include temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and lots of other things.
But when you're talking about the overall weather patterns from a certain region of the world,
you're talking about the area's climate.
Weather is the minute-by-minute changes in the atmosphere.
Climate is what the weather is like over a long period of time in a specific area.
Now, the weather is constantly changing. All the time, every day.
Think of the weather as being like that one friend of yours
who can never make up their mind about what movie they want to see
or what restaurant they want to go to.
Just because it's beautiful and sunny outside when you wake up,
that doesn't mean you won't need an umbrella before the day is over.
And raining is just one of the things that weather can do.
Rain, of course, is just a form of precipitation, or water that falls from the sky.
It happens when droplets of water in the clouds, or sometimes ice crystals,
get heavy enough and fall to the ground.
If they're crystals, the warm air near the ground will melt them as they fall, forming liquid raindrops.
But -- [sings] Do you want to build a snowman?
Another common form of precipitation is snow.
Snow is just ice crystals that don't melt into liquid water as they fall.
Another snow-like form of precipitation is sleet.
It's what happens when ice crystals fall toward the ground, partly melt, and then refreeze again.
But other kinds of weather can be way more severe,
and the most common kind of extreme weather is a form I'm sure you're familiar with:
[thunder rumbles] thunderstorms!
A thunderstorm can happen when strong winds make drops of water and pieces of ice collide and break apart inside a storm.
This causes electrical energy to build up, which creates a little something called lightning.
But all of this rain and snow and sleet I've been talking about?
That's all just weather.
And while weather can change in a few hours, a region's climate takes hundreds,
thousands, even millions of years to change.
So, how can we better understand the difference between weather and climate?
How about we send cartoon Sabrina on a little imaginary trip for a month?
Okay, here she is at her destination: Yuma, Arizona.
Let's pretend it's the fifth of the month.
On this particular day, where cartoon Sabrina is,
it's warm, but very cloudy, and light rain has been falling on her -- sorry, me -- all day.
Since clouds and rain are what the atmosphere has to offer
on this particular spot, at this moment, and they can go away at any minute,
those conditions are -- yep, the weather.
Now, let's fast-forward to the 10th of the month.
Hello, Sun!
Looks like tiny Me won't be needing an umbrella today!
How about the 15th?
More Sun!
The 20th? Still sunny.
The 25th? You guessed it -- sunny with a chance of, well, sunny.
And finally, on the 30th, the Sun's still shining!
Little Sabrina, I hope you packed your sunscreen.
So what does this quick time-lapse of a month in Yuma tell us?
It tells us that Yuma, Arizona is a pretty sunny place.
In fact, on most days, it's one of the sunniest cities on the whole planet!
So the city's weather patterns existed before mini-me arrived,
and will continue after she leaves.
In that case, you could say that Yuma has a sunny climate,
even if it's weather on a certain given day happens to be rainy.
Now you know that weather is much more than just temperature.
It's the condition of our planet's atmosphere, and it's constantly changing.
You also know that weather and climate are not the same thing.
But I saved the extreme stuff for last!
The severe weather stuff, that is.
You'll have to tune in next time to learn more about tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards.