An Alphabet Of Weather (1991)

[Music] These letters of the alphabet will make you dry or make you wet. You'll see the clouds and watch them grow. You'll feel the wind and hear it blow. [Music] You'll see the sky. It might be blue or dark with clouds as storms move [Music] through. The sun may shine or it may not. You may be [Music] cold. You may be hot. [Music] So from these letters all together here comes an alphabet of weather. A is for air that's everywhere. You can't see it, but you know it's there. Animals need air, and plants do, too. That's probably not a surprise to you. But there's one special thing you might not know about it. There never would be any weather without [Music] it. B is for balloons that help scientists know how fast and which way high winds blow. They send the balloons up into the sky higher than birds or airplanes fly. And what they find out helps them say what kind of weather is coming your [Music] way. C is for clouds all puffy and white that hide the sun when it's shining bright. But do they always look like that? No. Just some clouds are puffy and others are flat. And white clouds don't always stay that way. Sometimes they darken and change to gray. Clouds are pretty passing by making pictures in the sky. D is for degrees. When you're measuring the [Music] temperature in the winter when there's snow. That's when temperatures are low. In the summer when it's hot. Are they low? Oh no, they're not. E is for the Earth in space. It looks like such a quiet place, but down there closer to the ground, weathers making lots of sound. [Music] [Music] F is for fog. What's a fog? Do you know? It's just a cloud that is down too [Music] low. G is for greenhouse. It's glass. That's true. That's why it can let the sunlight through. The sunlight warms whatever is there. It warms the soil and plants and air. It warms each little seed and sprout. And glass won't let the warmth get out. Our earth's a kind of greenhouse, too. The air lets all the sunlight through. The sunlight warms the earth below. It warms the world and the things that grow. It makes our world a pleasant place. Like a greenhouse out in space. H is for hurricane. A terrible storm that starts in oceans that are warm. The winds are strong. The waves are high. when a hurricane comes passing by. I is for ice when water freezes and winter weather brings chilly breezes. Flakes of snow are bits of ice. Snow can make a place look nice. [Music] J is for jet. Not the kinds that fly, but a strong wind that blows high up in the sky. The jetream is air that scientists have found can change our weather down on the [Music] ground. K is for kites. What makes them fly? The wind. when it comes blowing [Music] by. L is for lightning, a zigzag flash that's followed by a thunder crash. Lightning's just a giant spark that lights the clouds up when they're dark. When you see it, what you see is only electricity. M is for meteorologist. Is that a word in your spelling list? Many of them all work together to study and predict the weather. Will it rain or will it snow? A meteorologist should know. N is for news. Sometimes you'll see news of weather on TV. Too much rain that floods a town. Tornadoes that blow houses down. Drought that dries a farmer's crop. Snow that never seems to stop. very cold or very hot. The weather's in the news a lot. O is for ozone in the air. One of many pollutants there. Ozone hurts your lungs. That's why we're warned when the ozone levels high. [Music] P is for precipitation. A long hard word that means the same as some easy words you've heard. What's precipitation? Rain. What's precipitation? Snow. Those are words you know. So, next time that it's raining and you're on a vacation, surprise the people that you're with and say [Music] precipitation. Q is for quickly. What's really strange is just how quickly weather changes. It may start out being a sunny day when suddenly clouds are on the way. And weather that was clear and warm has quickly turned into a storm. And everything is dark. And then the weather starts to change again. The clouds move off. The sun shines through. And quickly all we'll see is [Music] blue. R is for rainbow. That colorful sight that we see while it rains and the sun shines [Music] bright. S is for smog. That's smoke and fog. The two together are not nice [Music] weather. T is for tornado. A whirling cloud that twists and spins and is terribly [Music] loud. U is for umbrellas that keep you dry when rainy clouds come passing by. V is for volcano. That mountain there that erupts and throws ashes into the [Music] air. If the ashes spread all around the world, then they can change the weather that comes your way. W is for the wind that blows and makes things move wherever it [Music] goes. It blows across the open sea. And where it stops? Well, don't ask [Music] me. X is for xylophone. Something to play when you're stuck indoors on a rainy day. Y is for y'all. A sailboat. [Music] Like other sailboats afloat, a yaw depends on the wind to blow and fill its sails that makes it go. Let's watch some yaws and boats like these that sail along on a steady breeze. Z is for zero degrees. You know that temperature can go above or below as the weather changes and you know a reason. One cause of the change is the change of the season. The temperature gets very low when winter comes and cold winds blow. There's sle and ice and drifting snow when the temperatures zero and below. And one day, the temperature starts to rise. The seasons change, so it's no surprise. It rises past zero and keeps on going. And soon there's no more ice or snowing. But now there's rain and a thunderstorm. And soon the weather is very warm and 0° temperatures far below. But you wonder just how far up it will go. And all year long, it's just as before. The weather keeps changing and changing some more. But you've seen a lot of the changes to see through all of the alphabet from A to Z. We took all the letters and put them together. And we've had an alphabet all about weather. [Music]