Student Weather Forecasters Let You Know What's Up Students use
simulation to offer campus forecast. March 9, 2006 8:30 PM Want
to know if you'll need your umbrella tomorrow? You can get a
daily campus weather forecast right here at SF State. Posted in
the hallways of Thornton Hall are forecasts provided by Gator
Weather, a student chapter of the American Meteorological
Society. A team of ten student atmospheric and oceanic science
majors and a few meteorology students learn about public weather
forecasting by working in a weather simulation laboratory here
on campus. To make their predictions, the students use data from
weather balloons that are released twice daily by the National
Weather Service. The balloons gather data about temperature,
humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction. Starting with the
current conditions both on the surface and in the middle and
upper atmosphere, computer models are used to predict how the
weather will shift every twelve hours over the next few days.
The lab also receives