Category: Weather

Make a Barometer

by melynda

I'm off in the woods for a few days, so I leave you with this post from September 2008. Enjoy.

I just found this website--Weather Wiz Kids--with all sorts of great explanations and definitions of different types of weather. They also have a bunch of experiments related to weather and weather-monitoring.

In this experiment kids can make their own barometer. A barometer measures atmospheric pressure. The air in the atmosphere exerts pressure that constantly changes due to moving weather systems.

Make a snow gauge

by melynda

I've shared a lot of ideas for creating a weather station here on Your Wild Child. (Links at the bottom.) Now it is time to add a snow gauge.

What's the difference between a rain gauge and a snow gauge, you ask? Not much, except the obvious: one collects snow and the other collects rain. It's what you do with the gauge that's important.

Make a hygrometer

by melynda

Hello amateur meteorologists!

How's your weather station coming along? You have made all the other instruments, haven't you? Just kidding, but scroll down to the bottom to see what else you can make to create your own weather station.

First off what the heck is a hygrometer? It's an instrument that measures the amount of water vapor in the air. The earliest form, the mechanical hygrometer, was invented in 1783 by Horace Bénédict de Saussure, using human hair to determine the moisture content of the air.

Now it is your turn!

Make your own weather vane

by melynda

A comment on my rain guage post has inspired me to write a series of posts on making your own weather station. Today, we make a weather vane.

A weather vane, or wind vane, tells you what direction the wind is blowing from. Wind from the west often ushers in fair weather, while eastern winds can indicate rain or storms. Of course, it all depends where you live and your local weather pattern.

Make a rain gauge

by melynda

I don't know what May is like where you are, but here in southwest Montana it is rainy, sunny, snowy, sleety--sometimes all in the same day!

We've been getting a fair bit of rain lately, but I don't really know how much. I would know if I had measured it with a sweet homemade rain gauge.

Frozen breath and clouds

by melynda

Last week I caught my husband breathing heavily out of his mouth and watching a frozen cloud appear. It was well below zero, -16 to be exact, and the moisture from his breath immediately froze.

I remember being a kid and loving to watch my breath freeze. No easy feat given that I grew up in southern California. But there were days when we could make it happen.

Next time you and your kids are outside, take a deep breath and exhale through your mouths. The warm water vapor you exhale will condense when it hits the cold outside air, forming a cloud. The cloud disappears as it floats away and dissipates.

Preserve a snowflake

by melynda

In my last post I talked about catching and identifying snowflakes. Here are a couple methods for preserving them.

Super Glue Replicas from SnowCrystals.com

1) Go outside with some glass microscope slides, cover slips, and superglue (not the gel kind; it should be thin and watery). Cover the slides and cover slips until they become as cold as the surrounding air.
2) Let snow crystals fall onto a cardboard collection board, and scan around with a magnifier to find an attractive specimen. Carefully pick the crystal up using a small artist's paintbrush and place it on one of the slides.
3) Place a drop of cold superglue on the crystal, and drop a cover slip on top. Be careful not to melt or otherwise damage the snow crystal in the process.
4) Leave the slide outside or in your freezer for a week or two until the glue hardens.

Acrylic Replicas from SnowCrystals.com

Another method uses clear acrylic spray paint, which is readily available in hardware stores. The spray is especially effective for replicating windowpane frost and similar ice structures. The (cold) spray must be applied lightly, since the solvent in the spray can dissolve the ice if too much liquid is present. The best procedure is to pre-coat the glass slide with the plastic film, place snow crystals on it, and then spray the surface again until the surface is moist.

More resources
Paper Snowflakes describes games, charts and snow science.

Here's the book I use:
Image from Amazon
Ken Libbrecht's Field Guide to Snowflakes by Ken Libbrecht