Weather Protocol

1. Gather materials, including a thermometer, vegetable oil, measuring cup, a ruler, and Weather datasheet printouts (get from program leader).

2. Check air temperature, using thermometer from the Black Box. Remember to shade the thermometer. (You could ask your students to compare temperature readings in the shade and sun to test the importance.)

3. Check precipitation, using rain can outside the Jamieson dome. First, remove the funnel. Take the measuring cup, and dip or pour out 50mL full of liquid. This was the starting amount of oil. Continue to dip or pour liquid, measuring until it is all gone. Anything above the 50mL of oil is precipitation! Record the amount in field journals. Replace the 50mL of vegetable oil if there was no rain, or add 50mL of fresh vegetable oil if need be to the can, replace the funnel, and reposition the can.

4. Convert amount of liquid to mm of precipitation by having students measure the diameter of rain can. Divide the volume of liquid by the area into which it fell (area of a circle being pi*r^2), and convert that to the height in mm (1mL = 1 cubic cm, 1cm high = 10mm high).

5. Record cloud cover (clear / partly cloudy / mostly cloudy / cloudy)

6. Record the wind speed with the anemometer

7. Record the air pressure with the barometer

8. Measure snow depth next to the weather station with a meter stick. If we start doing winter programs we will also measure snow water equivalent using a snow tube and a scale.

9. Enter data on Google Forms [1]