Weather for adventure travel and treks
Weather for adventure travel
The weather is important to understand for adventure travellers and trekkers. If you are going on a trek to wild places you will need to know the weather and to be able to read what the weather will do so that you stay safe and out of trouble on your adventure or trek. Weather is the day to day condition of the air about us. Climate on the other hand is the average weather of any locality, over a period of years. Many factors influence the weather: the time of they year, the motion of the earth, the distance of a locale from the equator, the wind, sun , air and moisture in the atmosphere are some of them. Rain drops , acting as prisms, produce the rainbow. All the colors of the spectrum together make up the color white.
The suns rays do not heat the atmosphere is all regions equally or at the same time. An area of low pressure is produced where the sun’s heat is most powerful. The hot air has a tendency to expand and rise and as a consequence the cold air flows in to replace it, causing a disturbance of the air - the wind. As the warm air rises it meets cooler air higher in the sky and then tiny particles of moisture which it contains are condensed into droplets of water. The higher they get the larger the drops of water become. Soon they form clouds. Some types of clouds are cirrus, cirro-stratus, cirro-cumulus, alto-cumulus, strato-cumulus, cumulus, and cumulo-nimbus. When the water particles in the clouds get too heavy they fall to earth as rain. Winds blowing off the sea usually contain some water vapour. When they strike a mountain range they are forced upwards and cooled, often causing rain to fall. That is why the windward side of a mountain has a heavier rainfall than the leeward side. When sunlight shines through falling rain each raindrop acts as a prism and splits the light into the many colors of the spectrum, producing a rainbow.
When there is a sudden drop in the temperature of the atmosphere, the water vapour in the air is condensed on to the particles of dust floating near the surface of the earth, resulting in a fog being produced. In the cool of the evening one often sees clouds of condensed particles of moisture which is mist, hanging in the air, but in the morning the sun heats the atmosphere making it capable of absorbing more moisture and the mist is dispelled. Snow is frozen water vapour while hail is frozen rain drops. Very hot weather is often accompanied by thunder and lighting. Because of evaporation which causes their capacity to be reduced, the clouds become charged with excess electricity. Lightning is caused when this electricity jumps to earth or another cloud. The sudden expansion and contraction of the air caused by the heat of the flash causes the rolling of thunder which is frequently heard.