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How do clouds form? Where is lightning likely to strike? Why do so many tornadoes hit the Great Plains? These are the sorts of questions children like to ask—and an EO Web site has the answers. Web Weather for Kids, redesigned over the past year by EO assistant director Susan Foster, former RAP scientist Kevin Petty (now with the National Transportation Safety Board), and Communications photographer and Web designer Carlye Calvin, is an easy-to-navigate site that uses colorful graphics and animations to explain the science of weather. “The purpose is to engage the kids in the excitement of dramatic weather events—tornadoes, thunder, clouds, and so on—and to provide resources so they understand the basic science needed for weather forecasting,” Susan explains. The site, which won a UNISYS prize for online science education in 2000, is geared for children in grades five through nine, like these middle schoolers at a program at Ames Community College. Highlights include animations of molecules; science projects, such as creating fog in a jar; and fun trivia questions, like: “Guess which state has the most lightning strikes per year per 10,000 square miles?” The site, funded primarily by NSF, UCAR, Friends of UCAR, and the Boulder Valley School District, will be expanding over the next year or so to include pages about hurricanes and blizzards, and a Spanish version is on the way. If you want to check it out, go to www.ucar.edu/educ_outreach/webweather. (You can even find the answer to the lightning question.) |
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cruise in the Caribbean and others prefer a quiet camping
trip in Yellowstone, increasing numbers want to spend their
vacations chasing the worst weather they can find—especially
one of nature’s greatest spectacles, the tornado. 
Engineers,
scientists, and other staffers interested in using the High-performance
Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research
should consider registering for the NSF Community Workshop
on Instrumentation for HIAPER, which will be held at NCAR
on 4–6 November. 
What
if scientists could provide advance warning of upper-atmospheric
disruptions that affect communications satellites or predict
spectacular displays of the northern lights? 
