Snow Day!

Image courtesy of SnowCrystals.com

We had a snow day this week. All day before the storm, students (and other teachers) would ask me about the storm and whether or not we'd have the next day off. As the resident weather geek, I was happy to oblige their questions and share the salient data. There are a plethora of weather tools available on the internet these days, but I always turn to a few favorites that are well-suited for scientists and educators alike.

The Weather Channel offers the cleanest, best-looking weather maps on the internet. I use these maps in the classroom to help students learn about weather symbols and patterns. Multiple maps are easy to save and stack inside an application like Apple Keynote or Microsoft PowerPoint to create a beautiful weather map slide show.

Weather Underground is the finest source of in-depth weather information for the weather enthusiast. One-stop-shopping for maps, local weather data and forecasts, radar images and animations, severe weather alerts, and more. I particularly like their email notification services, which always keep me informed of the latest weather watches and warnings. For the classroom, wunderground's radar animations (which can be downloaded and saved) are an excellent way to help students understand patterns associated with precipitation, atmospheric circulation, and severe weather.

For official information about weather watches and warnings, NOAA's National Weather Service is the place to be. Only the National Weather Service can issue official watches and warnings for severe weather events; it is therefore crucial to understand what these watches and warnings mean so that appropriate preparations can be made. Each local National Weather Service office also offers local storm reports, which catalog snowfall totals, wind speeds and wind damages, hail sizes, and other significant weather events.

To keep track of the clouds, NOAA's Aviation Weather Center offers some great satellite imagery tools. Their "loop-big" satellite animations are excellent for helping students better understand cloud motion, cloud formation, and atmospheric circulation. Additionally, the satellite imagery offers water vapor views that helps students think about the flow of invisible water vapor in Earth's atmosphere.

For the pure science geeks, access to the raw data is important. Again, NOAA's Aviation Weather Center is the place to go. It offers access to up-to-the-minute METAR data from weather stations all across the United States. METARs typically include the basic meteorological variables such as temperature, dew point, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, cloud cover, precipitation, etc. I use this resource in the classroom to help students understand how weather data is collected, recorded, and reported.

Tired of the current weather and wanting to know when the next big snowstorm is coming? Turn to Unisys Weather to view and analyze short-, medium-, and long-range information from computer weather models. I enjoy viewing the GFSx 500 mb height and SLP loop, which shows the progression of large-scale weather patterns and trends across the US in a colorful 10-day animation.

Finally, for your artistic enjoyment, check out beautiful photographs of snow crystals at SnowCrystals.com — the site all about snow crystals and snowflakes. With its stunning images of snow crystals, The Secret Life of a Snowflake is a fine addition to the science classroom or library book shelf.

Now, get outside and enjoy the snow day!

Colorado Weather Diagrams

Colorado Weather Diagram

This week, students created Colorado weather diagrams in order to think more deeply about significant weather events and what must be done to prepare for these events. The lesson also provided an opportunity to talk about using primary resources when conducting scientific research. Not surprisingly, with this week's early-season snowstorm, many students chose winter storms as their primary research focus—although tornadoes are always popular, too.

Here are the guidelines for the lesson:

Pick one Colorado weather event to research in more detail. Use the primary resources on our science website and the materials (primary resources, posters, textbooks, etc.) in the classroom for your research. Create a labeled and illustrated diagram about your event, and include the following information:

• What are the necessary ingredients for this type of weather event?
• How/why/when/where does this weather event occur?
• What are the hazards and impacts of this event on humans? 
• What are some good safety preparations and guidelines for this type of weather event?
• Don’t forget descriptive title, caption, color, etc...

Use the space on the paper to organize your notes and create a rough draft. Your final draft goes on a separate sheet of paper.

There are several reasons that I like this lesson:

• It reviews/reinforces the concept of using primary resources when conducting scientific research. We get a chance to discuss the appropriate use of resources such as Wikipedia and textbooks, and the benefits of getting as close to the primary source as possible when engaging in scientific research. In the case of severe weather, NOAA and the National Weather Service are definitely excellent primary resources. A list of the guides we used appears at the end of this post.
• The research questions are multidimensional, covering both the mechanics of weather and its impacts on human beings. Students complain that sometimes their favorite TV shows are interrupted by severe weather warnings—this lesson helps them understand and appreciate the necessity of these interruptions and the potential life savings that occur because of them.
• There is room for creative expression. The more I teach, the less I specify how a particular assignment should be presented by students. I speak in terms of generalities: a well-designed diagram with appropriate communication elements such as title, caption, labels, arrows, color, etc. Our classroom standard of excellence is that students may be as creative as they wish, but they cannot distort, exaggerate, or dilute the scientific data; and, their presentation must be such that an intelligent stranger would fully understand their work without being confused or needing to ask basic questions such as "What is this?" or "What does this mean?"
• Students are expected to rough draft and peer edit their work, which emulates the peer review process in science.

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Here are links to the primary resources used in this lesson:

NOAA Safety and Awareness Publications, Brochures, Booklets for Children and Adults

NOAA Preparedness Guides:

• Floods: The Awesome Power
• Thunderstorms, Tornadoes, Lightning: Nature's Most Violent Storms
• Winter Storms: the Deceptive Killers

NOAA Owlie Skywarn Guides:

• Floods Ahead!
• Lightning Ahead!
• Tornadoes Ahead!
• Winter Storms Ahead!