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!

Analyzing Local Weather Data

These days, there are numerous sources and tools on the internet that provide access to live weather data, which can be used to practice and refine data interpretation skills. In our school district, data interpretation is one of the essential middle level science learnings:

"Students can interpret, analyze, and evaluate data and recognize bias in order to formulate logical conclusions."

ASOS: the National Weather Service's
automated weather observing network

The National Weather Service provides a plethora of weather data that is ideal for use in the classroom. In my last post, I talked about hurricane data. In this post, I'd like to explore local weather data.

On a daily, monthly, and yearly basis, the National Weather Service records and archives basic weather data such as temperature, pressure, wind, precipitation, etc. In most places across the United States, there is more than 100 years worth of data in the climate archives—all of this data is accessible online. This data can be used in the classroom to analyze local patterns and trends.

To access the National Weather Service climate data:

1. Go to http://www.weather.gov
2. Type your zip code into the Local Forecast box in the top left corner
3. On the next page, select the link to your local National Weather Service office in the top left corner—it looks like "NWS Denver-Boulder CO"
4. On the next page, look for the Climate section along the left panel and select the Local link. 

From here, you and your students have access to all of the local climate data and records. One of the reports I use with my students is the "Climatological Summary Month-to-Date," which provides a table of the current month's daily weather statistics. Each day during one month, we start our science class by pulling up this page and recording the previous day's high temperature, low temperature, and precipitation in our own data tables. At the end of the month, we graph, summarize, and analyze the data. Students reflect on the following questions:

• What was the average high temperature for the month?
• What was the average low temperature for the month?
• What was the total precipitation for the month?
• How much warmer or colder than normal was this month?
• How much wetter or drier than normal was this month?
• Based on the data, how would you summarize this month's weather?
• Were there any notable or unusual weather events this month?
• Were there any record weather events this month?

We should seek every opportunity to bring authentic data into the classroom to promote scientific literacy and help students make real world connections. One of my favorite quotes that bears repeating (often):

"If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you..." —Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist

The National Weather Service is but one of the many science organizations that publishes useful data online. I will discuss others in future posts...