Weird Clouds

You wouldn't believe what I saw last Friday while at the local lake.  We were playing in the sand when my mom called me over to look at some strange looking clouds.  I said to her, "That's a wall cloud."  Turns out, it was not a wall cloud.  The kind of cloud I saw is often mistaken for a wall cloud.  The kind of cloud we saw was a shelf cloud.  A shelf cloud is different from a wall cloud because a shelf cloud comes before a storm and a wall cloud comes after a storm.  Here are some pictures taken by the fabulous photographer Michelle.

Pinecone Weather Station

Hello, today we are going to talk about how you can predict weather with pine cones.  It all started out when I heard you could predict weather with pine cones.  I asked my friend, "Big L", "How do you tell what the pine cone is saying."  Big L answered by saying, "When it is open, there will be good weather.  If it is closed, it is raining or is just about to."  I wanted to know more.  So yesterday my mom and I found out the pine cone is reading the humidity with its scales.  You might be asking yourself if a pine cone has a brain.  The answer is no.  A pine cone reads the humidity because when it is humid the scales expand and make the scales close.  When it is warm and dry, like now, the scales open to release the seeds giving them a better change of becoming a tree.  Its the cells that take in moisture and expand.  Isn't that interesting.

We made another hygrometer out of a pine cone.  It looks like this.  You use a pin in the pine cone to measure where the scales are.

Me marking where my pin is on my hygrometer.


If you would like to do this experiment too, here is where we got our information.
http://thehappyscientist.com/science-experiment/pinecone-weather

My Weather Tools

Last night I watched the International Space Station fly by.  It went by in the northwest sky.  This is a picture of the dusk sky from last night.

Today I am going to talk about the tools meteorologists use.  At Christmastime I got this fancy weather station used.  Weather stations tell you some very important weather information. I used to predict weather with my friends. I liked it so much, my mom and dad got me this weather station. Now I will tell you about the tools on the weather station.
Hygrometer - measures humidity   
Thermometer - measures temperature
Rain Gauge - measures rainfall
Anemometer - measures wind speed


My favorite tool is the anemometer.  Someday I hope I can use an anemometer to measure a hurricane's wind speed.  And, it has the word mom in it (just a little joke).

This is a picture of me with my weather station.  The tool on top is the anemometer.  My favorite tool.  A couple of days a go, it was really spinning.  The highest reading I got was 10.57 mpk.  This was on my street.  We didn't get a true reading because we didn't have it in an open field.

Hello, my name is Grant.

I am eight years old.  I am doing a blog as a fun summer project.  I am interested in weather because I think it is fascinating how violent and how calm the weather can be.  Like, for instance, wind in a tornado can be so violent. The weather can be calm, for example, a nice summer day.  I have started to prepare myself to learn all about weather by reading books from the library.  I also have a weather station I would like to use to report the weather.  This will take time for me to learn. I'd like to share what I learn with you.  Please feel free to contact me if you would like to add some weather related information to my blog.  I love comments.  Please leave a comment if you visit.  I hope you enjoy my weather blog.

Today:

I'd like to tell you about the clouds I observed outside.  Today there are cumulus clouds in the sky.  Usually when you see cumulus clouds, they often look like flat cotton on the bottom and rounded on the top.  When you see a short cumulus, you can be sure your picnic will be okay.  If the cumulus clouds are really tall, you might wanna watch the weather.  This is what a cumulus cloud looks like: