My fourth grader girl is try to find info. on thunder storms,we are new at this.please help?

What about making observations of thunderstorm events?

Thunders usually find within severe weather systems like fronts, hurricanes, but they can also coming out of clear skies in summer time. Thunders are convective events, i.e. hot/humid air overturns when mixed with cold/dry air. At this season, thunders usually occur when a cold front passing (warm front too, to a lesser extent). For example, the latest tornadoes event (which destroy the high school called Enterprise in a southern state) was related to frontal system. On that day there were numerous lightning all over the eastern continent. Check out these pages for current lightning events in the continent:

http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/lightning/index_e.html
http://www.intellicast.com/IcastPage/LoadPage.aspx?loc=usa&seg=LocalWeather&prodgrp=SevereWeather&product=NationalLightning&prodnav=none

Thunders occur in clouds, of course. The specific type is called cumulonimbus (Cb by meteorologist) They have a lowly hanging flat cloud base, with towering vertical development above 30,000 ft, and the cloud top may spread over. Pictures can be found on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_cloud
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/cld/cldtyp/vrt/cb.rxml
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/25q.html

In the last one, scroll down to Fig 10, and you can see its interesting cloud tops from the space. I believe your daughter will find them familiar. So spotting Cb, as they are called by meteorologists, is a good sign of thunders coming!

To complete the project, I suggest your daughter pay attention to the weather forecasts. find out if any days have severe weather in the continent. Then, check out weather websites, e.g. intellicast. Find out which area reported thunderstorms. Check the lightning website to see where these thunders are currently located. Check the satellite loops if she can find out Cb associated with the thunders. On "infrared channel" a cluster of Cb may appear as a patch of deeply color (red/purple most often) because their cloud tops are cold. On "visible" channel, Cb have distinctive lumpy clouds. Cb may be (and often) embedded in a broader range of clouds. If it happens that your area is going to have thunderstorms, nice to look out the sky and see how it changes as the storms are coming. take pictures of Cb if she has the luck to find them. Cb are relatively small, so she may not find them.

Moreover, tropics always have thunderstorms. Check out the satellite images over mid/south America, or Indonesia. See if you and your daughters can identify thunderstorm clouds. You will also notice that winds are moving from East to West in the tropics. In the mid latitudes, winds are blowing from west to east. These will lead many interesting topics for your daughters to discover!

Just some thought... Hope it helps!

try looking at yahoo as 4th grade level weather information

Try these links, Good luck.
Sandy in WV
FEMA For Kids: Important Terms
" Disaster from a Kid's Point of View " Professor B's Thunder & Lightning Secrets " ... estimate how many miles away a storm is by counting the number of ...
www.fema.gov
And
NetHead Weather - Thunder Storms
Thunder Storms. Thunder and lightning occur together. The ... In metric, if it takes three seconds to hear the thunder, the storm is about a kilometer away. ...
netheadonline.com

If you have tried the internet and library, you might try to go on nettrecker.com, although you need a password. If it id for a project, the teacher will usually give you a location to find it. I usually go on ask jeeves and then hit the books at the library. Hope this helps!

its caused by hot air hitting cold air - the thunder
the lightning is caused by electrons reacting with one another and actually goes from the ground up despite what it looks like

good luck

try for tropical and equatorial type of climate in encyclopaedia

why u dont try google.com (search engine ) i m sure it will help u out !!