Updated Jul. 30, 2020 9:17 AM
AccuWeather School's out for the summer, but the fun of learning about the weather isn't over. While other camps may have been canceled, AccuWeather has many new and exciting experiments and projects planned for the summer that parents and our virtual campers can watch and do from home. So, pack your activity bags, and let’s go to AccuWeather Summer Camp!
🏊🏽 July 30 - Swim class: What are tropical waves?
When you hear meteorologists say that a tropical wave may strengthen into a hurricane, they aren’t talking about the waves that you see at the beach:
Interesting, too, is that Africa is also where dust from the Sahara Desert, which is the kryptonite of hurricanes, comes from.
If this dust or strong wind shear isn’t present and the water is warm enough, a tropical wave can organize into a tropical depression. If a tropical depression continues to grow and get stronger, it will become a tropical storm and then a hurricane. The stronger the storm, the more damaging the winds.
🥤 July 29 - Water break! It’s ‘Rainy Day’ in this Pennsylvania town
July 29 is traditionally known as “Rainy Day” in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, where it has rained 111 times out of the past 135 years on this date:
As you heard in the This Date in Weather History podcast, rain on July 29 is far from unusual in southwestern Pennsylvania. However, if you live in San Francisco or Los Angeles, you would be happy to see rain this time of year.
Late spring to early fall is a very dry time for most of California – that’s why the state and other parts of the West deal with a fire season before the rainy wet winter months.
🎨 July 29 - Art Station: Make a rain stick!
Here’s a fun activity to make it sound like rain in your house -- make a rain stick!
All you need is a paper towel roll, aluminum foil, rice, clear tape, wooden spoon, broom handle, and colored paper. If it makes this activity easier, you can also grab a funnel. Now, let’s see how AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls puts it all together into a rain stick:
🔎 July 29 - Weather Detectives! Don’t use relative humidity to know if it’s humid!
You look at your AccuWeather app and you see that the relative humidity is 90 percent – that means it’s humid, right? It might feel like it during the summer, but let’s rewind the calendar back to winter. If the relative humidity is 100 percent when it is 35 degrees Fahrenheit outside, is it really that humid? Definitely not.
The key to knowing whether the air is comfortable or sticky lies with the dew point temperature.
(Photo/gjohnstonphoto/Getty Images)
Instead of paying attention to how high the relative humidity is, use this cheat sheet instead to know how humid it is (and don’t forget to check out the AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperature to find out how hot or cold it will actually feel outside):
Depending on where you live, you may have slightly different adjectives for these ranges – the point is that the higher the dew point, the more uncomfortable the air is since it takes longer for your sweat to evaporate – which sweat is your body’s way of cooling itself down.
🪐 July 28 - Space Exploration: Asteroids versus meteors, what’s the difference?
Most of us have heard of asteroids, meteors and even meteorites – they are all rocks from outer space, but what are the differences that distinguish each from the other? The answer lies in their final destination:
If you want to have fun with sidewalk chalk and show everyone what you learned today, you can mimic the drawing shown below:
Don’t try and draw all of the asteroids that NASA is aware of – you would have to find enough room for 990,048 asteroids! NASA also estimates that if you would combine all of the meteors that fall on Earth each day, it would add up to about 48.5 tons (44,000 kilograms) – good thing those meteors are small space rocks and most burn up in Earth’s atmosphere before hitting the ground!
One more thing – notice how there is a meteoroid drawn in the photo above, but that wasn’t in the video. A meteoroid is a small asteroid. Think of a meteoroid as a space rock, and an asteroid as a massive space boulder.
🦸🏽♀️ July 28 - Superhero powers: Meteorologists focus on weather, not meteors
You get your AccuWeather forecast from a meteorologist – wait a minute, doesn’t it make more sense for a meteorologist to study meteors and not the weather? We have to go all the way back to around 340 BC when Aristotle from ancient Greece wrote the first weather book, Meteorologica.
The book’s title came from the Greek word that means lofty or in the air, which would refer to meteors, clouds, rain or snow. As time went on, astronomers took on the job of studying meteors and meteorologists focused on the weather. Maybe if it worked out the other way, all of us at AccuWeather would be called weatherologists!
🎨 July 28 - Art Station: Colorful meteors can paint the sky!
Do you make a wish when you see a shooting star? If you see a pretty color made by that shooting star, it may make you think that wish is bound to come true!
Shooting stars (also called meteors) can leave streaks of purple, teal, red, yellow and orange in the sky. Why’s that? Let’s look at some cool shooting star photos by AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Samuhel and learn the answer:
“If seen out of the corner of your eye, a meteor may appear to give off a flash of white light, AccuWeather Digital Journalist and Meteorologist Brian Lada said.” It’s when the sky is totally clear or if you catch a picture of a shooting star when you have a better chance at seeing the streaks of color.
How fast or slow the meteors zip across the sky can also lead to a different color – slow meteors are typically red or orange, while the faster ones can leave a brief trail of blue.
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