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Ok! Admit it! You’re almost obsessed with weather forecasting. A weather map is on the desktop of your computer, you have half a dozen weather sites bookmarked, you watch the evening forecast on the T.V. and can quote the names of hurricanes. You study climate change by reading historical accounts and scour the Google news for odd or extreme weather events. You’re a weather geek!

Benefits: Weather Geek
Weather watching is easily as entertaining as sports. It requires analytical thinking and observation and we know that study stimulates your brain and observation skills are as necessary now to being human as any other time in history. As we endure a period of unstable weather, weather observation contributes to important data as well.

Format:  Weather Mapping
Aside from simply keeping track of your neighborhood weather patterns in a journal or dated calendar, think about joining the controversy of climate change by noting down your own observations regarding changes in local weather patterns, perhaps where you have spent many years of your life or any dramatic weather events in your area.

The more serious weather geek, gripped by unending curiosity about the history of earth’s climate may want to include or write about great weather events in history compared to weather events in our own time. This may include juicy tips such as this quote from NOAA: “The U.S. has sustained 134 weather/climate disasters since 1980...total standardized losses for the 134 events exceed $880 billion.” 

Compare this to events in history such as two floods on January 16th, 143 years apart. The St Marcellus Flood in the Netherlands in 1219 that killed 36,000 people and The Grote Mndrenke (Great Drowning of Men) in 1362, an Atlantic gale that changed the configuration of  the North Sea and dramatically eroding the east coast of England and killing a minimum of 25,000. How about noting the coldest and hottest temperatures on record and comparing them to your own, 135.9 degrees F in Libya in September of 1922 and -89 celsius or -128 degrees fahrenheit at the Vostok Station in Antarctica in July of 1983. How do these compare to your experience? Have fun keeping records and notes!