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FAQS
PRESSURE
Pressure is what it's all about really. Pressure determines wind direction, wind speed, if the wind is cold or warm and many other factors. There is low pressure, which is like a valley or a gully of a mountain range. And if you think of air like the water on a mountain range, air flows into low pressure. There are two types of low pressure you will see on a synoptic map presented on the evening news. A trough, which is a dashed line, and a circle, which is where air circles around a low-pressure point. High pressure is where air flows away, or like a mountain, it is like the top of the mountain for water. Another part of a high-pressure system is a ridge, like a long narrow stretch of land at a high point on a mountain. High pressure brings stable air and fine conditions in general. Low pressure brings strong winds and generates storms as air lifts off the ground up high into the air.
TEMPERATURE
Temperature is measured in a controlled environment behind what is called a Stephensons Screen box. This keeps the sunlight, wind and rain away which can vary the temperature. Of course, there is also the 'feels like' temperature which allows for those variations, because after all, we don't walk around in a slatted box. Temperature can be altered by the amount of cloud around or the direction of the wind. If the wind is brought up from the deep South near Antarctica, then the air will be cold regardless of what the sun is doing. If the air comes from the equator, it will be hot but also humid.
RAIN
Rain is the result of air cooling and forming water. Water is heavier than air and falls from the sky. When the temperature drops at night, the air will cool, and for some places like Townsville, that is when we see most of our rain.
WIND
The wind is determined by pressure and the lower the pressure, the more wind there is as air flows into the pressure system. Intense low-pressure systems can create cyclones which are essentially very very low-pressure systems. Its not the pressure that determines a cyclone, its the wind speed at set intervals.