You Too Can Forecast The Weather

If you're going to try your hand at weather forecasting, make it easy on yourself. Get the right instruments and tools and the job is a breeze. We're not referring to national or global weather here. You would need humongous funding and special tools like radar and Doppler radar and all kinds of extremely expensive and large equipment in order to predict weather on that large a scale. We're talking about your local or even up to regional weather. With the help of great weather forecasting tools, you can actually be the weather expert in your neighborhood or in your school.

What kinds of weather instruments are we referring to when we talk about your acquiring the right ones? Simple ones, for the most part. Though weather is ever changing and sometimes unpredictable, it can be fairly accurately forecasted using common sense, easily accessible weather knowledge and some uncomplicated weather instruments.

First of all, a "weather hound" needs a way to measure the temperature. That is done with a thermometer. Not the kind that is used when you get a fever, but a weather thermometer. Some of them can read both the indoor and outdoor temperatures and send them to an indoor weather monitor screen where you can read the temperatures from your home.

Another really handy tool that will tell you when the weather is about to change is the barometer. A barometer measures the atmospheric pressure and tells you when a high pressure system or a low pressure system are entering the area. When the barometer changes suddenly, you can bet that a change in the weather is going to take place in the next day or so.

You really should pay attention to the wind speed and the wind direction. Why? Well, because the wind is what carries the weather patterns to and from your area. If you know the direction that the wind usually blows say, in April, and it begins to blow from the opposite direction, you know that soon there may be a storm in your area. If the wind speed picks up significantly, you'll know that the storm is fairly strong and if you can smell rain in the wind, you know that it's likely that you will be using another instrument. To measure the wind speed, you need a tool called an anemometer (An-uh-MOM-eh-tur). This usually looks like three or four little cups or spoons spinning horizontally on a central hub. Each time the cups make a full circle, the anemometer knows this and it can tell how fast the wind is blowing by counting the number of times the cups go round.

If it rains, you get to use another instrument called a rain gauge. This simply measures the amount of rain that falls in a certain area. Some of these devices are simple, clear tubes and some are more sophisticated gadgets that actually fill up and then empty themselves and send the data inside to a monitor screen for you to see.

What other kinds of instruments does one need to become a good amateur meteorologist?

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Regardless of where you live, you can actually learn how to forecast tomorrow's weather. Just use good weather tools, gadgets and instruments and read up on some weather forecasting knowledge and you'll be impressing everyone you know with your intellectual weather predictions.