Animals & Nature

Weather Word Search

This weather word search hides words like thunder, cloud, storm to find. Play it free online or print the PDF with the answer key, a handy weather vocabulary activity.

10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included · Free printable PDF

Animals & Nature

Show / hide answers

Tap the first and last letter of a word — or use arrow keys and Enter. Dragging works too.

LIGHTNING
HURRICANE
BLIZZARD
OVERCAST
DOWNPOUR
THUNDER
TORNADO
RAINBOW
CLOUD
STORM

🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!

True stories

Two minutes, fifty degrees

Spearfish, South Dakota

On a January morning in 1943 in Spearfish, South Dakota, the temperature did something almost unbelievable. At 7:30 it read four below zero. Two minutes later it had leaped to forty-five above, a jump of forty-nine degrees in the time it takes to boil an egg. A warm, dry chinook wind had come pouring down off the mountains. The shift was so sudden that store windows cracked and frost flashed across car windshields as the air swung back and forth. By that afternoon the temperature had crashed again. Guinness records still list it as the fastest temperature change ever measured anywhere on Earth, more than eighty years on.

The man who caught snowflakes

Jericho, Vermont

In the tiny farm town of Jericho, Vermont, a young man named Wilson Bentley became fascinated by something most people brushed off their coats without a thought. In 1885, at age twenty, he rigged a camera to a microscope and took the first clear photograph of a single snowflake. Working on cold porches each winter, catching flakes on black velvet before they melted, he went on to photograph more than five thousand. No two, he found, were ever exactly alike. His patient images gave the world its lasting belief that every snowflake is unique, and they remain among the most studied weather pictures ever made.

Print this Weather word search

Did you know?

thunder: Thunder is the sound of air exploding; a lightning bolt heats nearby air to five times the sun's surface temperature.
cloud: A fluffy white cumulus cloud can weigh over a million pounds, holding its water as droplets too light to fall.
storm: A thunderstorm's rising air can lift raindrops back into the clouds, letting hailstones grow layer by icy layer.
lightning: Lightning can strike the same place many times; the Empire State Building is hit dozens of times every year.
hurricane: Hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones are all the same storm; the name just changes depending on which ocean it forms in.
blizzard: Blizzard originally meant a violent blow rather than a snowstorm, so this weather word once described an impact without any snow involved.
tornado: Tornadoes spin fastest of any storm on Earth, with winds that can top three hundred miles an hour.
overcast: Overcast skies can keep nights warmer, because a blanket of cloud traps heat that would otherwise escape into space.
rainbow: You can never reach the end of a rainbow; it shifts as you move, since it depends on your viewing angle.
downpour: Rain has a smell before it arrives: a storm's downdrafts can carry earthy scents from wet ground toward you.
climate: Antarctic ice traps bubbles of ancient air, letting scientists sample past atmospheres hundreds of thousands of years after the snow originally fell.
drizzle: Drizzle can wet your face while barely registering on weather radar, because its tiny droplets are harder to detect than ordinary raindrops.
season: Earth is closest to the Sun during Northern Hemisphere winter; its tilted axis matters more than that changing distance.
breeze: Coastal breezes flip direction daily: from sea to land by day, and back toward the water at night.
monsoon: The word monsoon means season; these winds reverse direction twice a year, bringing a dry half and a soaking wet half.

Trivia

What instrument measures air pressure and helps forecast whether weather is turning fair or stormy?
A barometer.
What is the name for the imaginary line where Earth's tilt gives the Northern Hemisphere its longest day of the year?
The summer solstice.
On the Beaufort wind scale, what is the highest and most violent category called?
Hurricane force (force 12).
What colorful arc appears when sunlight passes through raindrops and splits into its colors?
A rainbow.
Which layer of the atmosphere, closest to the ground, is where nearly all weather happens?
The troposphere.

Trivia · 1 / 5

What instrument measures air pressure and helps forecast whether weather is turning fair or stormy?

A barometer.

In their words

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.
Mark Twain

Is this weather word search free to print?

This weather word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like LIGHTNING, HURRICANE, BLIZZARD hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.

Print this Weather word search