Watching Bonnie On The Web

Computer Life column for August 29, 1998
by
Richard Gordon

When I tried to get my son to finish the school projects he has due on September 8 before he leaves for a scheduled trip to the Carolinas, he tried all his fourth-grader procrastinating wiles. Wednesday, he said, "We might not go because of Hurricane Bonnie. So I can work on this stuff next week."

I looked at him sternly and fired up Netscape. First, using Yahoo!'s mapping programs, (map.yahoo.com), we found the town that he is scheduled to visit and its position relative to the coast.

Then we zipped over to my favorite weather Web site, Purdue's "Weather Processor," (wxp.eas.purdue.edu), followed the link to hurricane information, and saw the position of the storm relative to his vacation destination.

He used to ride out rain storms with his eyes scrunched shut, his hands clapped over his ears, ignoring the world until the storm passed. As he learned more about the weather, his fears vanished. Indeed, before he could read, a pocket weather guide became one of his most prized and dog-eared books. By the time he was a first-grader, he was an avid weather fan; finding weather maps on-line was one of his earliest Web activities.

Here are some of our favorite weather sites.

Weather News

The official Web area of the National Weather Service (www.nws.noaa.gov) includes links to breaking weather stories, local forecasts, archive data, and very complete listings of current conditions. It's largely text-based, so it loads quickly over a modem.

Commercial news agencies all present extensive weather info. For example, The Weather Channel (www.weather.com) has a big, busy, and complete Web area featuring lots of maps and a concise weather encyclopedia. Or Accuweather's Web area (www.accuweather.com) includes "Window of Projected Movement" maps-for all named storms-that are very clear and easy to understand.

Sometimes the commercial news services have interesting supplementary information. For instance, ABC News' on-line coverage includes an article that provides a quick overview of how hurricanes form (www.abcnews.com/sections/science/dailynews/hurricanebirth.html).

But Purdue University's site (wxp.eas.purdue.edu) has been my favorite weather Web area for several years. It's slick, well organized, easy to navigate, and has lots of current info. For example, by clicking on the national weather map, you can see the current conditions and forecast for the nearest weather station. In the case of tracking Bonnie's progress, Purdue's maps of this season's Atlantic Tropical storms (available by clicking on "Hurricane" on the home page) were very easy for my fourth-grader to understand.

Weather Education

If you are interested in learning more about how our weather forms, hundreds of Web sites can help.

One of the more complete ones is the University of Illinois' WW2010 project (ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu). If you follow the link to their on-line guides, you'll find teaching material designed to "introduce fundamental concepts in the atmospheric sciences."

The British company Super.Net presents a growing list of weather-related lessons (www.itl.net/Education/online/weather/index.html) also worth looking at if you are a K-12 teacher interested in incorporating weather modules into a class.

Canadian meteorologist Keith Heidorn's "The Weather Doctor" (www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/doctor.htm) is an excellent, chatty and informative site aimed at middle and high school kids interested in learning more about the weather.

Neil O'Connor's Weather Talk (www.cnmoc.navy.mil/pub/wxtalk/wxtalk.htm) provides simple graphics and text explanations for a variety of weather phenomenon. It loads quickly, making it ideal for a parent trying to explain to a child how weather works.

My son took heart at how the forecasted track for the worst of Bonnie appeared to miss his vacation destination. Without that excuse, he buckled down and finished the last of his projects as soon as we closed Netscape.

Copyright © 1998, The News Journal Company

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