101 Amazing Earth Facts
- July 26, 2003
- 2 comments
There’s a very interesting article up on space.com that lists 101 Amazing Earth Facts.
Some of the more interesting:
25.What’s the driest place on Earth?
A place called Arica, in Chile, gets just 0.03 inches (0.76 millimeters) of rain per year. At that rate, it would take a century to fill a coffee cup.
29. What is the wettest place on Earth?
Lloro, Colombia averages 523.6 inches of rainfall a year, or more than 40 feet (13 meters). That’s about 10 times more than fairly wet major cities in Europe or the United States.
41. How much surface area does Earth contain?
There are 196,950,711 square miles (510,100,000 square kilometers).
47. Which of the following sources stores the greatest volume of fresh water worldwide: lakes, streams or ground water?
Groundwater comprises a 30 times greater volume than all freshwater lakes, and more than 3,000 times what’s in the world’s streams and rivers at any given time. Groundwater is housed in natural underground aquifers, in which the water typically runs around and through the stone and other material.
58. What is the fastest surface wind ever recorded?
The fastest “regular” wind that’s widely agreed upon was 231 mph (372 kph), recorded at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, on April 12, 1934. But during a May 1999 tornado in Oklahoma, researchers clocked the wind at 318 mph (513 kph). For comparison, Neptune’s winds can rage to 900 mph (1,448 kph).
89. On average, how much water is used worldwide each day?
About 400 billion gallons.
99. What are the most extreme locations in the United States, compass-wise?
This one is a bit tricky, and as it turns out three or even four of the answers may catch you off guard. The westernmost point is the aptly named West Point of Amatignak Island, Alaska. The northernmost point is Point Barrow, Alaska. The southernmost point is the southern tip of the island of Hawaii. The easternmost point—go ahead, take a guess!—is Pochnoi Point at Semisopochnoi, Alaska. Huh? Look at a world map. The tip of the Aleutian Islands lies on the other side of the 180-degree longitude line --- the International Dateline—putting Pochnoi Point barely but officially in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Check out the article yourself. There are links to all kinds of interesting articles throughout the list.
Chris
Hey, that sounds cool. I’m especially surprised that the driest and wettest places on earth are actually very close to each other.