Kids' weather knowledge boosted

Developing exciting, supplemental courses that young learners will become motivated about can be challenging. Some schools have proven that it can be done. I don’t recall any supplemental classes when I attended elementary school. Of course, those days are deep in the recesses of my mind, nearly lost to memory.

A friend sent me a news item about a school program that peaked my attention. It was about a supplemental course in weather. Sierra House Elementary School is located in South Lake Tahoe, California. It’s one of seven schools in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District. The supplemental program is called Weather Kids. This special program is for elementary fifth graders and it has been operating for over 30 years. While the kids are learning their special lessons, they get an opportunity to provide a live weather report at a local radio station.

I contacted Sierra House Elementary. I received an email from a teacher who had taught the Weather Kids. She shared this: “The Kids would have about six lessons before going down to the radio station to meet the DJ’s. Each student got a week in the first semester and a week in the second semester to call into the radio station and broadcast the weather report.”

My contact further explained the kids shared their weather observations, live, over the air. “They stated the types of clouds they saw when going to school, the wind speed and direction, the barometric pressure, the high and low temperatures for the past 24 hours, etc.” Their weather report ended with a weather prediction based on their observations. Learning about an element of Earth, weather, and then experiencing the excitement of doing a live weather forecast has got to be a lasting memory for those kids.

In January of this year, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) announced that PBS Kids will be airing a new segment titled Weather Hunters. It is a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-based series. PBS said the aminated science series is produced by Al Roker Entertainment. Some of you may be familiar with Al Roker. He’s the weather reporter for the nationally televised Today Show. “Each 22-minute episode of Weather Hunters will explore kid-relatable STEM-based activities and themes, highlighting the wonder of weather within the broad field of science in terms that all learners can understand,” according to the announcement.

For those interested in weather and climate, the National Weather Service offers free lessons, xamaterial and other resources. Looking further, the Met Office, the weather service of Great Britain, has a number of free lessons, as well.

Earth’s climate has changed, and it will again. If one could hop aboard a time machine, set a date and go back 10,000 years visiting the spot where they started, the climate would be much different. Today, there are opinions regarding climate change. On the other hand, science has shown that industrialized humanity is part of the climate change equation. The change is “anthropogenic.”

A recently published study from the University of California, Davis, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, took a detailed look at a specific place and timeline of Earth’s climate history. The study focused on the Holocene Era and the Western United States. This Era goes from our present time back to about 11,000 years. Human occupation occurred during this period. The authors of the study scrutinized published studies that addressed several climate interactions as well as fire activity in three time segments of the Holocene.

Looking at the pre-Holocene (11,700 – 8,200 years ago), the study found it was a time of warm seas. The Pacific Northwest was warm and dry. The Southwest was warm and wet with low fire activity. The Middle Holocene (8,200 – 4,200), the climate flipped. Oceans cooled down. The Pacific Northwest was cool and wet. The Southwest was drier. In the Late Holocene (4,200 to present day) a period of variable climate. The study shows a defined interval of fire activity over the past two centuries that is directly connected to human actions.

Professor Tessa Hill, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at U.C. Davis, summed up his research: “Climate records from the Holocene provide a valuable window into the context of human-caused climate change,” said Hill. “They provide an opportunity for us to understand places that may be more or less resilient to change in the future.”

The three-month outlook from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) for May, June and July is out. For our region, the temperature outlook is an equal chance of above- or below-normal temperatures. The CPC is showing below-normal precipitation for the three-month time period.

For the first quarter of 2023, here are weather statistics for you. January – precipitation: 1.71 inches, snowfall: 0.6, high temperature: 51.3˚F, Low temperature: 7.2˚F. February – precipitation: 0.29 inches, snowfall: 2.7 inches, high temperature: 53.5˚F, low temperature: 7.2˚F. March – precipitation: 0.69 inches, snowfall: 3.6 inches, high temperature: 61.6˚F, low temperature: 16.4˚F. All data is from my home weather station.

Our winter and spring may have created a false impression that we are out of drought conditions. Unfortunately, we are not. The U.S. Drought Monitor is showing D0, Abnormally Dry conditions in most all of Grant and Lincoln counties. Portions of Douglas and Okanogan counties are also in D0 conditions. The Unites States Drought Monitor Categories range from D0, Abnormally Dry to D4, Exceptional Drought.

April 5th will bring us a full Moon, called the Pink Moon. Other names for the April full Moon are, Breaking Ice Moon, Budding Moon, Awakening Moon, and Egg Moon. All these names have implications of Spring.