Day 67 (3/9): Acronyms and Weather

Colton has been enamored by weather for the past couple of years.  He could watch the weather channel all day...ok...well not all day...as long as he could sit still...so maybe that's just about 20 minutes.  But he loves looking at the sky and clouds and watching storms come in.  I heard on the news that Storm Spotter Training was coming to Manhattan so I knew it would be perfect for Colton. 

Jeremy Goodwin, from WIBW, was there along with what seemed like 1/4 of Manhattan.  The place was packed. We ended up getting there about 10 minutes early and we had to sit about 15 rows back.  Chad, who I think was from NOAA, did the majority of the presentation.

Yes I know these photos are not winning any award.  The lighting was horrible in a painted concrete block room and we were sitting so far back that I had to zoom tons so use your imagination.

It was a fascinating presentation with really cool videos and a wealth of information about how tornados are formed.  I learned the difference between wall clouds, shelf clouds, updrafts, downdrafts, and my favorite acronym for the night was SLC.  I thought it was probably a very long cloud name or short for a hard to pronounce weather term but it was short for Scary Looking Cloud.  I chuckled everytime I heard it. This is one that I will definitely remember and use.  Did you see that SLC in the sky?  Woah - check out that SLC! 

Colton didn't like it as much as I thought he would.  The videos (samples of ones that are similar) were super cool. He did talk about what he learned the next day so I know he learned something.  But so did I and thus tips for others going to a future storm spotter training.

1. Get there early to sit in front. It makes fora  long night with an 8 year old sitting next to you moaning and groaning because the people in front have big heads and that he can't see.
2. Don't be nice and take the neighbor kid.  She may look at your kid after 5 minutes and say she is ready to go. This makes your kid want to leave too.
3. Get all the handouts before you sit down or they run out. We only got one cloud identification sheet and that was the last one.  If we would have got in line when we first arrived, we would have been able to each get one.  Those things come in handy when you are trying to entertain 2 kids who want to leave.