Amateur Meteorologist

 

A fun family activity over the summer is to become amateur meteorologists. It is easier than ever to build your own backyard weather station and the level of difficulty in making your own instruments is dependent on skill level. One of my favorites, because it involves adults and children, was contributed by a blogger on Yahoo. Many discount stores are selling large rain gauges and thermometers for about $1 a piece. I own this book and it has instructions and other weather-related experiments.

  Ok, so we built this weather station. Now what do we do with it?!? Well, you will want to record your observations on this handy dandy chart. One way to make the idea of climate easier for your child to grasp is to take the data from the chart, enter it into Excel, and graph the data from each variable. You can also print out a graph of all the measurements (variables) and talk about whether or not they are dependent or independent on each other. For example, if the temperature is trending high does that mean the humidity will trend high as well? As you and your child are learning and recording, you might also want to talk about weather patterns and what that means to our culture. Think mountains, deciduous forests, wide variety of animals, longer growing season, and awesome storm systems!

  Now let’s talk about weather maps. NOAA has plenty of cool and interesting weather maps. You can teach your child about weather symbols, various types of fronts, and which weather patterns they are associated with. This may also be the time that your family will want to talk about a tornado, hurricane, or flood plans. We are coming upon a very active year that may be related to La Nina activity and the Sun cycle. Have fun and stay cool!