Classroom in the Air
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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, an enviromental studies professor at the University of Vermont, does with his students.  Each semester Ian takes students in his single prop airplane to teach about the weather.  I thought this was such a great approach to weather education that I decided to tag along on one of his flights.

Once in the air, Ian flies his plane over the hills and lake of the Champlain Valley to show how the land effects the air above it. Causing it to rise and fall.

Ian: “And we’re coming right to the lakeshore 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 experience where the student, in this case me, can actually feel the dynamic nature of the atmosphere.  Sometimes, a little too much so.

Ian: “I might as well fly right over to this cliff and see whether I get a bump.”

DT: “There’s the bump.”

Ian: “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.”

Ian: “Okay, here come the bumps.”

DT: “I’m noticing the trees as well.”

Ian: “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.”

Thanks to professor Ian Worley and to the folks at the Shelburne, Vermont airport. 

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.