雅思阅读2016.9.16.docVIP

READING PASSAGE 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-16, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Raining Ice In May 2012, disaster struck a mountainous region of China’s Gansu province, 40 people were killed and 29,300 people evacuated when a brief but extremely violent hailstone storm swept across Min County. Houses collapsed, roads were blocked and crops were destroyed. The extreme weather also affected the power supply and communications in the region. When you consider that hailstones can reach sizeable proportions, the damage they can cause is understandable. The world’s largest hailstone was found after a storm in South Dakota and measured 20.5 cm in diameter with a 47 cm circumference - this was after melting caused it to lose 5 cm from its original size. Apart from China and the US, other parts of the world that frequently suffer from hailstorm damage include Russia, India and northern Italy. Hail is a form of solid precipitation created within cumulonimbus clouds. Cumulonimbus clouds are caused by heating from below and cooling from above. As the earth is heated during the day by the sun, air close to the ground becomes warmer. Hot air is less dense than cold air and therefore lighter so it rises and, as it does so, it becomes cooler. The warm air reaches a cold point called the condensation level where the water vapor condenses and turns back to a liquid form. As the warm air rises to the condensation level, it becomes less able to keep its moisture and condenses into large clouds, which are often called thunderheads. The process of condensation releases heat into the surrounding air making the air rise even faster and release more moisture. These huge clouds are complex systems in their own right, containing large amounts of energy resulting in updrafts and downdrafts - vertical winds that can reach speeds over 176 km per hour and help in the formation of hail. Haii grows in the thunderhead’s main updraft where most of the cloud is ‘supe