JAG Weather

Just a few weeks into homeschooling, the children noticed that weather predictions seemed inaccurate compared to usual, where “usual” can already be quite chaotic in Calgary in early spring! They theorized all sorts of reasons why this might be so, including:

• Using the”B” team at the weather station
• Possible difficulty predicting the weather from home
• Lack of staffing at some weather stations due to work-from-home recommendations
• Or maybe lots of meteorologists off work

When they looked into it further, the curious students discovered that the grounding of thousands of airplanes was affecting the ability to predict the weather! It turns out, airplanes gather and transmit information on temperature, air currents, and other data while they are flying. This data is used to make longer-range weather forecasts. There was a shortage of information to work from, so the weather predictions were not as accurate as we were used to expecting.

From there, “Just a Guess” weather app was invented! The children thought it might be fun to see if they could guess the weather coming up just as well as the meteorologists working with limited information. They designed the specifications of the app, including the landing page, order of operations, weather options, icons, etc. Adult help was used for the coding aspects.

Remember: The current weather is accurate, but the forecast for tomorrow and into next week is Just a Guess!