# What is Wild Weather and Typhoon Tip?

An episode of [Science for Kids / Science's Not Boring: The Kids Science Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1896928296), 25 Jun 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2624612/episodes/19382564-what-is-wild-weather-and-typhoon-tip.mp3

Have you ever wondered what it's like inside the wildest weather on Earth? Imagine winds howling faster than a race car and skies turning a spooky green color before a massive twister drops from the clouds! In this thrilling episode of Science is Not Boring, Mira and Finn dive right into the eye of the storm to uncover how Earth's biggest weather monsters are made! Discover the mind-blowing true story of Typhoon Tip, the largest storm ever recorded in history! It was so gigantic that it could have covered almost half of the entire United States! You'll learn how warm ocean water fuels these spinning giants and find out what happened when brave scientists called Hurricane Hunters flew airplanes straight into 190-mile-per-hour winds! We'll also explore the terrifying 2013 El Reno tornado, a roaring beast over two miles wide with winds clocking in at an unbelievable 300 miles per hour! Why does our planet create such extreme and wild weather? Is it actually trying to help us? Grab your windbreakers and get ready for a whirlwind adventure to find out!

## Transcript

[0:46] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Science Is Not Boring by Kidopoly.com.
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: I'm Mira.
[0:51] SPEAKER_00: And I'm Finn.
[0:52] SPEAKER_00: Before we start, we have some special shout-outs.
[0:55] SPEAKER_00: A big hello to Louin, who asked for an episode all about wild weather.
[1:00] SPEAKER_00: And a huge shout out to the Stuart kids who wanted to know all about Typhoon Tip.
[1:06] SPEAKER_00: This one is for all of you.
[1:08] SPEAKER_00: Finn, imagine you're sitting outside on a clear, quiet summer night.
[1:14] SPEAKER_00: It's perfectly still, and it's a great time for moon watching.
[1:18] SPEAKER_00: I love nights like that.
[1:20] SPEAKER_00: No wind, just stars.
[1:22] SPEAKER_00: It's hard to imagine that while you're looking at the moon, thousands of miles away, the Earth is brewing up a storm so huge it could cover almost half the United States.
[1:34] SPEAKER_00: Wait, half the country?
[1:36] SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a movie.
[1:38] SPEAKER_00: Nope, it's totally real.
[1:41] SPEAKER_00: Today, we're talking about the wildest weather on Earth.
[1:44] SPEAKER_00: We'll explore skies that turn green before a tornado, winds that howl like freight trains, and the most massive storms to ever exist.
[1:54] SPEAKER_00: I'm already getting a little freaked out.
[1:57] SPEAKER_00: How big can a storm actually get?
[1:59] SPEAKER_00: Well, imagine a single tornado on land.
[2:02] SPEAKER_00: The 2013 El Reno tornado in Oklahoma was an astonishing 2.6 miles across, with winds roaring over 300 miles per hour.
[2:13] SPEAKER_00: Three miles wide?
[2:15] SPEAKER_00: That's wider than my entire neighbourhood.
[2:17] SPEAKER_00: That's right.
[2:18] SPEAKER_00: But to understand how storms get that big, we have to look at how they form.
[2:23] SPEAKER_00: And believe it or not, it all starts with heat.
[2:27] SPEAKER_00: Heat?
[2:28] SPEAKER_00: But storms are usually cold, wet, and rainy.
[2:31] SPEAKER_00: True, but huge storms like hurricanes and typhoons act like giant engines, and their fuel is warm ocean water.
[2:41] SPEAKER_00: The water has to be at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about 26.5 degrees Celsius.
[2:47] SPEAKER_00: That's exactly as warm as a heated swimming pool.
[2:50] SPEAKER_00: I'd love to swim in that.
[2:53] SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't want to swim when a storm is brewing.
[2:55] SPEAKER_00: It needs to be 80 degrees all the way down to about 164 feet deep.
[3:01] SPEAKER_00: That's deeper than a 15-story building.
[3:04] SPEAKER_00: Wow, so what does the warm water do?
[3:07] SPEAKER_00: When the sun heats up the ocean, the water evaporates into the air.
[3:12] SPEAKER_00: That warm, wet air rises high into the sky, creating a sort of vacuum underneath it near the water's surface.
[3:20] SPEAKER_00: This causes an area of low air pressure.
[3:23] SPEAKER_00: And nature hates a vacuum, right?
[3:25] SPEAKER_00: Does more air rush in to fill it?
[3:28] SPEAKER_00: Yep, cooler air rushes in to fill that empty space.
[3:32] SPEAKER_00: Then that new air gets warmed by the ocean and it rises too.
[3:37] SPEAKER_00: This creates a giant cycle of rising air.
[3:40] SPEAKER_00: Wait, why does it spin instead of just going straight up?
[3:44] SPEAKER_00: Because the Earth is rotating.
[3:46] SPEAKER_00: It's a scientific phenomenon called the Coriolis effect.
[3:50] SPEAKER_00: It twists the rising air, turning a regular group of thunderstorms into a rotating monster.
[3:56] SPEAKER_00: So it just keeps feeding on the warm ocean and getting bigger and bigger.
[4:00] SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
[4:01] SPEAKER_00: If this spinning storm forms in the Atlantic Ocean, we call it a hurricane.
[4:06] SPEAKER_00: But if it forms in the northwest Pacific Ocean, it's called a typhoon.
[4:11] SPEAKER_00: They are the exact same type of storm.
[4:14] SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to the Stuart Kid's request.
[4:17] SPEAKER_00: Typhoon Tip.
[4:18] SPEAKER_00: You got it! The story of Typhoon Tip starts on October 4th, 1979, out in the Pacific Ocean, near a tiny island in Micronesia called Ponpei.
[4:31] SPEAKER_00: Was it a giant monster storm right away?
[4:34] SPEAKER_00: Actually, no.
[4:36] SPEAKER_00: It started as a messy cluster of clouds called a tropical depression.
[4:40] SPEAKER_00: That means the winds were under 38 miles per hour, and for a few days it was completely stuck.
[4:47] SPEAKER_00: Stuck?
[4:48] SPEAKER_00: How does a storm get stuck?
[4:51] SPEAKER_00: Are there storm traffic jams?
[4:53] SPEAKER_00: Kind of.
[4:54] SPEAKER_00: There was another storm nearby, named Tropical Storm Roger.
[4:59] SPEAKER_00: Roger's winds were blocking Tip's path, keeping it weak and disorganised.
[5:04] SPEAKER_00: A storm bullying another storm.
[5:06] SPEAKER_00: That's kind of funny.
[5:08] SPEAKER_00: It was, but once Roger moved away towards the north, Tip had the whole warm ocean to itself.
[5:15] SPEAKER_00: And it started eating up all that heat and moisture like a vacuum cleaner.
[5:20] SPEAKER_00: Uh-oh, I have a feeling it got a lot bigger.
[5:23] SPEAKER_00: It exploded in size and strength.
[5:26] SPEAKER_00: By October 12th, it had become a category 5 super typhoon.
[5:32] SPEAKER_00: Scientists measured its air pressure and it dropped to an unbelievable 870 millibars.
[5:38] SPEAKER_00: Is that a lot?
[5:40] SPEAKER_00: I don't really know what a millibar is.
[5:42] SPEAKER_00: It's how we measure the weight of the air pushing down on us.
[5:46] SPEAKER_00: Normal air pressure is about 1,013 millibars.
[5:50] SPEAKER_00: 870 millibars is the lowest sea level pressure ever recorded on Earth.
[5:57] SPEAKER_00: Whoa! So the vacuum in the middle of the storm was incredibly strong.
[6:01] SPEAKER_00: Exactly! And because the pressure was so low, the winds rushed in at terrifying speeds to fill the gap.
[6:09] SPEAKER_00: The sustained winds reached a mind-blowing 190 miles per hour.
[6:15] SPEAKER_00: 190 miles per hour?
[6:17] SPEAKER_00: That's faster than a race car on a straight track.
[6:20] SPEAKER_00: It gets even wilder! Because of that intense vacuum and the spinning of the earth, the storm stretched out to an impossible size.
[6:30] SPEAKER_00: Typhoon Tip grew to have a diameter of 1,380 miles.
[6:37] SPEAKER_00: 1,380 miles?
[6:40] SPEAKER_00: I can't even picture that.
[6:42] SPEAKER_00: How big is it compared to a country?
[6:44] SPEAKER_00: If you place Typhoon Tip over the United States, it would stretch all the way from New York City to Dallas, Texas.
[6:53] SPEAKER_00: It was nearly half the size of the entire continental US.
[6:58] SPEAKER_00: One single storm covered half the country?
[7:01] SPEAKER_00: That's just impossible.
[7:03] SPEAKER_00: It's hard to believe, but it holds the world record for the largest tropical cyclone ever recorded.
[7:10] SPEAKER_00: And scientists wanted to know exactly what was happening inside this monster.
[7:15] SPEAKER_00: Please tell me they didn't go inside it.
[7:18] SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a terrible idea.
[7:20] SPEAKER_00: They actually did.
[7:22] SPEAKER_00: The US Air Force flew specialised planes called hurricane hunters directly into Typhoon Tip.
[7:29] SPEAKER_00: Are they crazy?
[7:30] SPEAKER_00: Flying an airplane into 190 mile per hour winds?
[7:34] SPEAKER_00: They are incredibly brave meteorologists.
[7:37] SPEAKER_00: They flew 60 different weather reconnaissance missions right through the clouds to drop instruments into the ocean and measure the storm.
[7:46] SPEAKER_00: What did it look like inside?
[7:48] SPEAKER_00: Was it just pitch black and terrifying?
[7:50] SPEAKER_00: The edges were a dark wall of violent clouds, but when they burst through into the centre, which is called the Eye of the Storm, it was perfectly calm.
[8:00] SPEAKER_00: The eye was 9.3 miles wide, with blue skies shining above them.
[8:07] SPEAKER_00: Phew.
[8:08] SPEAKER_00: At least the middle was peaceful.
[8:10] SPEAKER_00: But what happened to the storm?
[8:11] SPEAKER_00: Did it hit land at that size?
[8:14] SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, as it moved north toward Japan, the ocean water got colder.
[8:19] SPEAKER_00: Since storms need warm water at 80 degrees to survive, it finally started to shrink and weaken before it made landfall.
[8:27] SPEAKER_00: Okay, so typhoons are definitely the biggest storms on Earth.
[8:31] SPEAKER_00: But what about tornadoes?
[8:32] SPEAKER_00: You mentioned the El Reno tornado earlier.
[8:35] SPEAKER_00: Yes, tornadoes and typhoons are very different.
[8:39] SPEAKER_00: Typhoons are massive, form over warm water and can last for weeks.
[8:44] SPEAKER_00: Tornadoes form over land, usually last less than an hour, but they have the fastest winds on the planet.
[8:52] SPEAKER_00: Wait, faster than typhoon tips 190 mph?
[8:56] SPEAKER_00: Much faster! The El Reno Tornado hit Oklahoma on May 31, 2013.
[9:03] SPEAKER_00: Mobile radar systems measured its wind speeds at over 300 miles per hour.
[9:09] SPEAKER_00: 300 miles per hour?
[9:11] SPEAKER_00: That would blow a house completely away.
[9:14] SPEAKER_00: And you said it was 2.6 miles wide.
[9:16] SPEAKER_00: Yes, it travelled 16.2 miles across the ground, expanding rapidly.
[9:22] SPEAKER_00: The sky turned dark, sometimes even a bruised green colour, because of hail and the way the clouds filter sunlight before the tornado dropped.
[9:33] SPEAKER_00: 2.6 miles is like 45 football fields placed end-to-end.
[9:37] SPEAKER_00: It was.
[9:38] SPEAKER_00: It grew so fast that even experienced weather scientists, called storm chasers, were caught by surprise.
[9:45] SPEAKER_00: Nature is so powerful.
[9:47] SPEAKER_00: But why does our planet make such wild weather in the first place?
[9:51] SPEAKER_00: It seems really dangerous.
[9:53] SPEAKER_00: It's actually Earth's way of balancing its temperature.
[9:56] SPEAKER_00: The equator gets way too much direct heat from the Sun, and the North and South Poles are way too cold.
[10:03] SPEAKER_00: So storms are like giant planetary fans moving the heat around.
[10:07] SPEAKER_00: That's a brilliant way to put it.
[10:09] SPEAKER_00: Without huge storms carrying all that extra heat from the warm oceans up toward the colder poles, the tropics would eventually get too hot for us to survive.
[10:19] SPEAKER_00: Whoa! So even though storms are scary and we have to respect them, we actually need them to keep the Earth comfortable.
[10:26] SPEAKER_00: Alright, Finn, quiz time! Let's see what you remember about the wildest weather on Earth.
[10:31] SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm ready.
[10:33] SPEAKER_00: Bring on the storm questions.
[10:35] SPEAKER_00: First question.
[10:36] SPEAKER_00: What warm temperature does ocean water need to be for a hurricane to form?
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: Next one.
[10:46] SPEAKER_00: What was the name of the storm that temporarily blocked Typhoon Tip from growing?
[10:55] SPEAKER_00: Question three.
[10:56] SPEAKER_00: How wide was Typhoon Tip at its peak?
[11:03] SPEAKER_00: Here's number four.
[11:05] SPEAKER_00: What is the perfectly calm area in the middle of a typhoon called?
[11:13] SPEAKER_00: Last question.
[11:15] SPEAKER_00: How wide was the 2013 El Reno tornado the widest tornado ever recorded?
[11:25] SPEAKER_00: Great job! Let's see how you did.
[11:28] SPEAKER_00: The first answer is ocean water needs to be at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
[11:34] SPEAKER_00: For question 2.
[11:36] SPEAKER_00: The blocking storm was named Tropical Storm Roger.
[11:40] SPEAKER_00: The answer to question 3 is Typhoon Tip was a massive 1,380 miles wide.
[11:49] SPEAKER_00: For question 4, the calm centre is called the eye of the storm.
[11:55] SPEAKER_00: And the final answer is the El Reno tornado was an incredible 2.6 miles wide.
[12:02] SPEAKER_00: I still can't believe a single storm could stretch from New York all the way to Dallas.
[12:08] SPEAKER_00: Nature is absolutely wild.
[12:10] SPEAKER_00: It really is.
[12:12] SPEAKER_00: From invisible vacuums of air to 300 mile per hour winds, the sky is always full of surprises and science.
[12:20] SPEAKER_00: If you guys loved learning about Typhoon Tip, please leave us a five-star review.
[12:25] SPEAKER_00: Just scroll down on your podcast app and tap those five stars.
[12:29] SPEAKER_00: It helps us, like a hurricane hunter plane, help scientists.
[12:33] SPEAKER_00: Oh, and don't forget to check out our site, kidopoly.com.
[12:36] SPEAKER_00: We've got tons of fun learning games and science activities waiting for you there.
[12:41] SPEAKER_00: And if you want a shout out on the show or just want to say hi, email us at hello at kidopoly.com.
[12:48] SPEAKER_00: See you next time on Science Is Not Boring.
[12:52] SPEAKER_00: Bye everyone.

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