Guiding Lights - weather

GUIDING LIGHTS
BEACONSFIELD PRIMARY SCHOOL

WEATHER CONDITIONS

WEATHER

In the past, many vessels have been caught in storms and unable to get out of their way. This was often due to them not being warned quickly enough, and when they did get forecasts in time, they were very unreliable. The old sources of warning, used to be the radio, though it was partly because some people could not afford to have radios installed in their boats, that the forecasts didn't reach them in time. Now, most boats have installed radios, mobile phones, G.P.S. and computers from which you can get up to date weather reports when ever you need them.

While forecasting, they used:

WEATHER	INSTRUMENT	UNITS
Atmospheric weather	Barometer	Millibars
Temperature	Thermometer	F/C
Rainfall	Rain gauge	mm
Sunshine	Campbell Stokes recorder	Hours
Wind speed	Anemometer	Kph
Wind direction	Wind vane/wind sock	NSEW
Humidity	Wet bulb thermometer	F/C

These days they use satellite images, which are much more precise and reliable, than the old ways of forecasting.

Before satellites and these tools were about, people still used to predict the weather. Some ways of telling are: when the pressure drops - a bad weather sign - ants move to higher ground, and sheep's wool uncurls. When rain is about, pine cones open. So if you're a very observant person, you would probably find that there are actually many ways that nature shows what weather is coming up.

1st century BC Hero of Alexander (Ancient Greece) was probably the first to discover that the air had weight.	1805 Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (Britain) devised the Beauford Scale for measuring wind speed at sea.
1643 Evangelista Torricelli (Italy) invented the first barometer for measuring air pressure.	1843 Lucien Vidie (France) made the first aneroid ('non-liquid') barometer for measuring air preassure.
1654 Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany invented the first sealed thermometer for measuring temperature.	1846 John Robinson (Britain) invented the cup anemometer for measuring wind speed and direction.
1718 Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (Germany) devised the Fahrenheit scale for measuring temperature.	1851 The first published weather maps were sold to the public at the Great Exhibition in London.
1722 Reverand Horsley (Britain) invented the first modern rain gauge.The earliest mention of a rain gauge is in Indian writings from 400 BC.	1856 The first national storm warning system was started in France after storms destroyed ships during the Crimean War.
1742 Anders Celsius (Sweden) devised the Celsius or Centigrade scale for measuring temperature.	1930 Pierre Molchanov (USSR) launched a radiosonde for measuring weather in the upper atmosphere.
1783 Horace-Benedict de Saussure (Switzerland) made the first hair hygrometer for measuring humidity.	c.1945 John von Neumann (USA) built an electronic computer known as Maniac. It was the first to be used for weather forcasting.
1802 Luke Howard (Britain) named the three families of clouds - cirrus, cumulus and stratus.	1945 The first weather satellite, Trios 1, was launched by the USA.

Beaconsfield Primary School

Fremantle, Western Australia

GUIDING LIGHTS