Weather Pin #2: Describe a potentially dangerous weather condition in your community. Discuss safety precautions and procedures for dealing with it.

Some of our lakes sometimes flood, which can cause flash floods. In order to stay safe, you need to get up to the highest area. Or, if you're in a car, quickly shut all of your car doors and windows. Unless you're in a convertible, because then you're dead meat. You need to stay out of flood waters unless you have the right equipment. If you're a really good swimmer, you might think it's okay to go out but there are very dangerous things in flood waters like aggressive fish, sticks and rocks and debris from things that were broken in the floodwater. If you live near an ocean, there might be coral in the water too, which can cut you badly. If you know that a flash flood is possible, you should have a supply of food and water handy and a lifeboat and life jackets if you can get them. If you hear warnings about flash floods, stay away from the lakes. But if there are no warnings at all and the weather is okay, you can play in it. And if you're already in a boat when the flash flood happens, you might be safe then, because the water should just carry you up. But it's still safest to get away from the water and up as high as you can when you hear the flash flood warnings.

PS- If you live near Mt. St. Helens, stay away from it, because it might errupt again. But if you live near the Gulf of Mexico, don't worry about the oil. Worry about the hurricane that might come and throw it all up onto the land.

Weather Pin #5: 4. Make a report to your den or family on a book about weather.

I read a book from the Discovery Channel called Super Storms that Rocked the World. I got it from my school book order. I learned about volcanoes that have errupted, like Mount St. Helens, where pilots got fried from the erruption. I read about tsumanis, like the one that happened in Asia. I think that anyone who would try to surf a tsunami is idiotic! Reading about Mount St. Helens was my favorite part, but it also had parts about avalanches, floods and tornadoes too. Even a dust bowl that happened in America in the 1930's, which was a bad thing that happened because there wasn't enough weather- which is it's own kind of natural disaster! Here's a picture of Mount St. Helens when it errupted:

Weather Pin #1: 1. Explain to your den or an adult family member the meaning of these terms: weather, humidity, precipitation, temperature, and wind.

weather: It's evaporation, temperature, heat, humidity, big, fluffy fog that I wish was cotton candy all mixed together into a climate.

humidity: the water that's in the air.

precipitation: It's when the water in the air falls out of the air, as mist, or rain, or snow.

temperature: It's how hot or cold something or somewhere is.

wind: Is when the air moves.

Weather Belt Loop #3: Watch the weather forecast on a local television station. Discuss what you saw. Follow up by discussing the forecast's accuracy.

Two nights ago, I saw on the "Local on the 8's" on the Weather Channel that it was mostly all red. Red means very, very, very severe weather. The darker the red, the more dangerous. We had a severe thunderstorm in our area and it almost knocked out the lights. And then the next day, the cable went out because they were trying to fix the other cables. I saw a whole, whole, whole bunch of rain it made me feel very, very scared and it interrupted a lot of shows with the severe thunderstorm alert, when the screen turns all blue with the red stripe in the middle and all those sounds coming. We also saw a lot of lightnight that was very close- it made my whole window turn white. The next day I saw a whole bunch of tree branches and in Ann Arbor there were two deaths reported. The forecast was definitely accurate!

Weather Belt Loop #1: Make a Poster of the Water Cycle

I made a picture of the water cycle, because it involves weather which I really like. Water goes from the seas and lakes to the clouds through evaporation. Then in the clouds, it gets cooled down and once the water starts to get too heavy, it will rain. Then the rain falls downs and runs from mountains and hills into the rivers and lakes again and it starts all over.

Weather Pin #5: Explain the differences between tornadoes and hurricanes.

One of things about tornados is that they can happen almost anywhere. And hurricanes, they mostly happen in tropical areas like Hawaii, Mexico and Australia. Like the hurricane that's still forming (and has been forming for 2 weeks now) called Hurricane Alex. Personally, I think that's going to be one of the biggest because it's been forming for two weeks now. Tornado's don't happen on water, but hurricanes take up a whole lot of water. Plus you need to be either the ocean or the sea in order to have a hurricane but tornados can happen anywhere. The place with the fewest tornado's is Atlanta, which I learned from the show "Tornados" which is on channel 62, which is the Weather Channel. By the way, they said that in some places, they said it is going to be +10 (extremely hot), so gather up all of your sunscreen and swimsuits and go to the beach. But watch out for tornados because it's tornado and hurricane season.

Tornado's and hurricanes both start out as a simple cloud, but when hot and cold air meet, they form a giant vortex that will pick up anything in it's path and throw up. And did you know that a simple F1 vortex can jump a mile?? And that's the weakest kind of vortex.

Hurricane

F4 Tornado