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Author: Stephen Lewis, Janet Sumner
  • Video
  • 30 minutes

Wild Weather Kitchen Experiments

Updated Friday, 8 August 2025

Watch these short videos investigating extreme weather and you can even try to recreate an avalanche, dust storm, flood or tornado for yourself!

Dr Janet Sumner creating a tornado replica in the kitchen. The Earth’s atmosphere is essential to life. This is not simply as a gas to breathe: the atmosphere shapes the Earth’s surface, transports heat, water and nutrients and protects us from harmful radiation. Without the atmosphere, the surface of the Earth would be much too cold for liquid water and the planet would be a frozen desert.

The atmosphere is dynamic and moves in response to the way that it is heated by the Sun. The way that the atmosphere moves is governed by the Earth’s gravity and rotation. This leads to the day-to-day changes that we experience on the surface, which we call weather.

Life in different regions has adapted to the weather and to the pattern of seasons. Weather is important to almost everyone’s life. Predicting the timing and amount of rainfall is vital to agriculture. Knowing the strength and direction of winds is important for travel and transport, from sailing ships to modern aircraft. Everything, ranging from construction to sports and entertainment events, may be affected by the weather. But the most extreme weather can have a devastating impact on people’s lives.

In these short videos we will explore four extreme weather-related events which you will be able to investigate with simple home experiments to understand the science behind them. We hope that you will investigate further and you can share and discuss your results with us on the OpenLearn social media channels. Just tag us or @ us in your posts on Facebook or X.

Watch these instructional videos and recreate your own wild weather

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