Topic Overview: Weather

Weather is very important. It determines what clothes we should wear. It even affects what we can do for fun.

For example, is it warm enough to wear shorts today? Is it cold enough to go ice skating now? To answer questions like these, you can just look outside. But what if you want to know if it will be warm enough to wear shorts tomorrow? Will it be cold enough to go ice skating this weekend? To answer these questions, you will need to know what the weather will be like in the future. But how can you know what the weather will be like in the future? Just watch the news or read the newspaper, and you will find out.

Weather forecasters tell us what the weather will be like. They find out from meteorologists. Meteorologists are scientists who study weather.

Weather happens every day. But what exactly is weather? Weather is made up of many parts. One part is temperature. Temperature is how hot or cold the air is. Another part of weather is precipitation. Precipitation is water that falls from the sky to Earth. The water can be a liquid. It can be a solid. Or it can be a mixture of the two. Rain, snow, sleet, and hail are types of precipitation. A third part of weather is wind. Wind can be a gentle breeze. It can also be a strong tornado. All of these parts are affected by air pressure. Air pressure is the fourth major part of weather. As the phrase implies, air pressure is the pressure that air exerts on Earth's surface.

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