Category: Weather Explained
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El Niño vs. La Niña Explained: How ENSO Reshapes Weather Worldwide (2026 Update)
What El Niño and La Niña actually are, how the ENSO cycle drives weather patterns on every continent, and what the strong El Niño event underway in 2026 means for hurricanes, heat, and global temperatures.
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Wildfire Smoke Chokes New York Days Before the World Cup Final
Last updated: July 17, 2026. Quick Answer Smoke from more than 100 wildfires burning in Canada has pushed New York’s air quality to “very unhealthy” levels just two days before the World Cup final. New York City’s air quality index hit 270 on Thursday evening, and a statewide Air Quality Advisory covers all of New…
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America’s Second Heat Dome of 2026: All-Time Records Fall in Salt Lake City and Montana
Last updated: July 16, 2026. Quick Answer A second heat dome, part of what forecasters are calling a “double heat dome” summer, rebuilt over the Great Basin, Rockies, and Plains on July 12, 2026, and broke records the first one never touched. Salt Lake City hit 109°F that afternoon, its hottest reading in 152 years…
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Hundreds of Cobras Escape a Flooded China Snake Farm as Typhoon Maysak Kills 39
Two breached reservoirs washed away a commercial snake farm in Guangxi, China, releasing roughly 900 snakes — including venomous cobras — into flooded villages. Here’s what happened, why China farms cobras at all, and what to do if you ever encounter one.
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Is 2026 Going to Be the Hottest Year Ever Recorded? Here’s What the Data Shows
Every month of 2026 measured so far has ranked among the five warmest on record globally, and a strong El Niño is still intensifying. Here’s how 2026 stacks up against 2024’s record, updated monthly with the latest Copernicus, NASA and NOAA data.
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Can Weather Radar Accurately Track Snow? What to Know Before Winter
Weather radar can detect snow, but it’s noticeably less reliable at it than at detecting rain, mainly because snowflakes reflect far less energy than raindrops and because the radar beam frequently overshoots shallow winter storm systems entirely. Why Snow Is Harder for Radar to “See” Snowflakes are less dense and reflect radar energy much less…
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Understanding Radar Reflectivity (dBZ): From Light Drizzle to Severe Storms
dBZ (decibels relative to Z) is the unit meteorologists use to measure radar reflectivity, and it’s the actual number behind every color you see on a rain radar map, from light green drizzle to alarming shades of red and purple. What dBZ Actually Measures When a radar pulse hits raindrops, hail, or snowflakes, some of…
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Why Does Rain Radar Sometimes Show Nothing When It’s Actually Raining?
If it’s raining outside but your radar map looks clear, the most likely explanation is that the radar beam is scanning well above the rain, the precipitation is too light to register strongly, or the map simply hasn’t refreshed yet. The Radar Beam Isn’t Scanning at Ground Level Weather radar doesn’t look straight down; it…
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What Is Doppler Radar and How Does It Detect Storms in Real Time?
Doppler radar detects precipitation and wind by sending out pulses of radio waves and measuring how their frequency shifts when they bounce off raindrops, snowflakes, or hail, a phenomenon called the Doppler effect. The Doppler Effect, in Plain Terms You’ve heard the Doppler effect before, even if you didn’t know the name: it’s why a…
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Cloud Types Explained: A Guide to Identifying Clouds
Clouds are the sky’s way of telling you what’s coming next, and once you know the basic categories, you can often predict weather changes hours before they arrive. The Three Height Families Meteorologists classify clouds primarily by altitude: high clouds (above roughly 20,000 ft), mid-level clouds (6,500-20,000 ft), and low clouds (below 6,500 ft), plus…