The Weather Notebook: Learning In The Air

Learning In The Air
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Dave Thurlow, Host

You can learn a lot about weather by being up in the air, where weather happens. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. Going into the air is exactly what Ian Worley, a professor at the University of Vermont, does with his students. Each semester Ian flies his students in his single prop airplane to learn about the weather. I thought this was such a unique approach that I decided to tag along.

Once in the air, Ian flies his plane over the hills and lake of the Champlain Valley to demonstrate how pockets of rising air interact.

IW: "And we're coming right to the lake shore right now. If the lake is warmer than the land today, we'll rise. We're going up right now at about 100 feet per minute just when we came over the lake."

He likes this approach, saying it's a kind of hand's on learning where the student, in this case me, can actually feel and experience the thrill of the atmosphere. Sometimes, a little too much so.

IW: "I might as well fly right over to this cliff and see whether I get a bump."

DT: "There's the bump."

IW: "There's the bump and I've got a 250 feet per minute ascent rate and there you go. Now you feel it going down? Are you with me?

DT: "I'm with you."

IW: "Okay, here come the bumps."

DT: "I'm noticing the trees as well."

IW: "Ok, the trees are very close. And here we go around the edge and here comes the lifter going right off this."

DT: "Look at that...that's a roller coaster."

Flying and bumping into the sunset over the Champlain Valley, this is Dave Thurlow.

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory, with major support provided by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive and the National Science Foundation.