I had an awesome opportunity to talk with students on the other side of the world today about the weather! I spoke with students who are from Australia, but attending a school in Singapore. I originally made the connection with one of the teachers at that school through Twitter. He asked if I would mind talking with his students about how to analyze and forecast the weather, and how we present it on TV.
Through the power of technology, I was able to have a live conversation with a small group students (4 young girls) via Skype! With the “selfie stick” to help, we started to talk about weather and forecasting at the wee hour of 1:45am eastern time…in Singapore, that’s 1:45 in the afternoon.
These girls are quite brilliant. They had some great questions. I was able to answer most of them but, admittedly, they stumped me on one question. I couldn’t identify one of the symbols that was on their weather map (image below). Turns out, the image they had was one from some independent weather source who may have taken some “creative freedoms” with their weather symbols, representing a tropical cyclone as a yellow square with 2 small circulating squiggles (that one was new to me!). There were quite a few differences between the synoptic maps I’m used to analyzing – the colors are different. Lows are blue instead of the usual red, Highs are red instead of blue, cold fronts are shown as yellow instead of the usual blue. So, I was curious to learn if, in fact, this is considered accurate in other parts of the world, or if my suspicions were correct in that there were some creative liberties taken by the creator of this image. With a little internet searching, looks like my suspicions were correct, someone was having fun playing with colors.
I did get to do a little research on the local Australian Bureau of Meteorology in that search! Always neat to see how other governement agencies disseminate weather information. I’m so used to seeing our National Weather Service information…it’s a similar agency, just for another part of the world. There are numerous other government operated meteorological agencies all around the globe.
I had a great time getting to share my knowledge with these students, and being able to talk weather with them. Now, these girls will put together their own weather presentation at their green screen! I know they will be great!
A big thanks to Craig Kemp, the teacher who originally reached out to me to connect these students with the world through technology. Looking forward to the next opportunity! If you’d like me to talk with your student’s class via Skype, let’s connect! Get in touch with me through my “Contact!” page.
Kerrin Jeromin 