DATASTREME SUPPLEMENTAL SUMMARY

To complement the Daily Summary for Thursday, 6 December 2001

BUILDING THE DAILY WEATHER SUMMARY


I have been asked to provide you with some of the "behind the scenes" ideas and secrets that went into the preparation of the individual daily weather summaries. This discussion can be used as an example of how you can use current weather information from a variety of sources for your own current weather discussions in the classroom.

The daily national weather summary appearing on the DataStreme Homepage is intended to help you visualize how weather patterns evolve on a daily basis with a discussion of the various weather phenomena that have occurred across the country within the 24 hours previous to the posting of the summary. By looking at the weather on a daily basis, you should be able to get a better understanding of the topics described in Part A: Narrative. Because of space considerations, a detailed national summary is not always possible. Consequently, on many occasions, only several major current weather events are described, with detailed explanations added to discussion. These explanations, or additional topics that appear in the "Concept for the Day", are tailored to fit with and expand the material that you have been studying in the Narrative text and the weekly Activities.

I also view the national weather summary as a vehicle for showing how the weather impacts humans in many areas of the country. Since you are teachers, I hope that this point is not lost. I feel that the current weather and simple weather data sources (such as NOAA Weather Radio, the weather page in the local newspaper or "USA Today" or the "Weather Channel" on cable television) can be used effectively as a means of stimulating interest and enthusiasm in essentially any weather unit, or subject area to include the various sciences, social studies and mathematics. We trust that you will use current weather in this way in your classroom and encourage your colleagues to do likewise.

In producing the daily summary, I routinely use various sources of information, including the "Weather Channel", and several different weather servers on the Internet to prepare the summary. Since we want to have the summary in place on the DataStreme Homepage early in the morning for your convenience, I must prepare the summary late on the previous evening, well after the late local television news and weather programs. As a result, I cannot always depend upon just one source to get all the information on a timely basis. On occasion, I have found that a particular site may not be operating. Therefore, I have to use some ingenious schemes or modified schedules to access current data.

Typically I use the "Weather Channel" to get an overview of the national weather, together with some of the human impact focuses. Armed with this outline, I typically go to a variety of Internet sources. Besides the various graphical products that appear on the DataStreme Homepage, I may get several charts from one of the servers. More often, I spend most of my preparation time looking at various text products. For example, I will use the evening list of National Temperature and Precipitation for Selected Cities appearing on the Interactive Weather Information Network (of the National Weather Service) to obtain the daily temperature extremes in the coterminous U.S. Every day I will check the listings on the Ohio State Atmospheric Sciences Program for the daily weather records and the public information statements. Either of these sites also gives me access to the National Flood Summary and to the various weather watches and warnings that are currently in effect across the country.

In each summary I included a daily Historical Weather Events that I had extracted from the electronic files of the Aviation Weather Center, Kansas City, MO. If you would like to view the set of 12 monthly files, they are available through the Internet at http://www.awc-kc.noaa.gov/wxfact.html . Another source of historical events that uses many of these entries is the monthly almanacs that appear on the Intellicast site. Usually I selected only one for the date; some days may have had as many as 8 entries. My intention was to provide some historical perspective, some human interest, and even some humor at times. These types of entries could be used in many ways in the classroom as a vehicle for either introducing a topic (and it does not have to be meteorological) or helping the students maintain a weather calendar.

I have enjoyed preparing these daily files and I hope that I have provided you with some ideas as to what types of information that could be employed in your classroom. Thank you for bearing with me, and keep a "weather eye out".

Sincerely,

Ed Hopkins

P.S. I would be interested in hearing what aspects of the daily weather summary you liked (or disliked) and what aspects of the Concepts of the Day (Tuesday and Thursday) you liked (or disliked). I would especially like to hear from those who have used any of the materials (or ideas) that I produced in your classroom. Please indicate if you have used these in an innovative or interdisciplinary fashion. You may email your comments directly to me at my address as indicated below.


Return to the Thursday Daily Summary
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URL: datastreme/learn/r_sup.html
Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2001, The American Meteorological Society.