Brainstormology
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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, we have a new Brainstorm. As you probably know by now, a Brainstorm is a question I ask you to test your weather knowledge. Anyone who answers receives a Weather Notebook poster. And if we use your answer, you get a magic weather mug. Here goes.

Most of you are likely to know that a "meteorologist" is someone who studies weather, and a "climatologist" is someone who studies climate. Climate by the way is simply the average weather over years, centuries, and millennia. There are however several - kind of - subsets of meteorology and climatology. Certain weather and climate scientists are in fields like micrometeorology for example. Micrometerorolgy - you know, a bunch of little tiny meteorologists. Actually one of our contributing writers, Dr Keith Heidorn is a micrometeorologist and he's 6-foot, two, 240 pounds. This field of study concentrates on micro-scale environments like a small woodlot, a farmer's field, a section of shoreline or even a backyard.

Then there is pluviculturology. This can be a profitable profession if you are consistent and good at it. You see a pluviculturalist is a rainmaker.

And then there's the dendochronologist, someone who studies tree rings to determine seasonal and long-term variations in weather and climate. Now for the Brainstorm. What does a paleotempestologist do? Just to repeat, what does a paleotempestologist do?

That's today's Brainstorm, which you can answer by giving the Weather Notebook office answering machine a call at 1-888- RAIN-001. That's 1-888-RAIN-001. You can also send us an email from our website at mountwashington.org. And you can even send a letter to Weather Notebook, P.O. Box 2310, North Conway, NH 03860.

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