Outreach and Education Activities

Did you know that the National Weather Service (NWS) can virtually visit your classroom and talk with your students? The NWS National School Outreach team is ready to answer their weather-related questions! 

Whether it is talking about weather basics, tornadoes, hurricanes, winter weather and weather safety, or other topics like space weather, NWS can pop into the classroom to speak to all K-12 students. Meteorologists and staff are available to meet with a classroom or a group, and we can tailor presentations towards specific topics that engage your students through discussions, presentations, question and answer sessions, experiments and office tours.

How does it work?

All your classroom needs to participate in an NWS virtual classroom visit is an internet connection, a webcam and a microphone. With this setup, your class, multiple classrooms across your school district or classrooms across the country can participate together! You can use Google Meet, Zoom or Skype. The setup is easy: just click the link from Google Meet or log onto Skype at the scheduled time. That’s it!

With the virtual set up, we are flexible to meet the needs of your school! 

  Who will be Participating?

With this set-up we can have just your classroom participating or open up the presentation to other classrooms across your school, your district or around the country! We are flexible to meet the needs of your school!

The presentations will be handled by meteorologists from the National Weather Service in State College with a wide-range of experience and specialties. All of the meteorologists have a passion for weather and for education and have taught weather lessons in a variety of classrooms and grade levels. In addition to NWS State College meteorologists, it may be possible to get scientists from the Space Weather Prediction Center, meteorologists who work at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, or any number of other specialists in the agency on the call for special presentations. So make sure to ask!

What can we teach?

We have several interesting and engaging topics we can present to your students and can certainly tailor programs to your students’ needs! Weather Basics is approximately 45 minutes and covers where the weather comes from, cold/warm fronts, high/low pressure etc. We also have a Severe Weather program option, which is approximately 1 hour. This discussion covers various types of severe weather and weather safety tips. One of our other popular programs is Ask-a-Meteorologist. This engaging 30 - 60 minute session allows students to drive the discussion with their questions about anything weather and weather science related. Climate is approximately 45 minutes and covers weather versus climate, signs of a changing climate and how we measure it, what you can do, and climate resources. Finally, 45 minutes of Space Weather covers all things space weather:  the sun, solar storms and the potential impacts here on earth.

How do I sign up? Fill out the form below!

Additional Outreach and Education Activities

Tours:

• You can e:mail the webmaster (see link below/left) to request a tour (weather-dependent, of course!)

Ways we educate the public:

• We traditionally staff a booth at both the PA Farm Show and PSU Ag Progress Days
  Each Year, we try to attend these functions, and provide information on our services to our customers.
• Skywarn Spotter Program
• NOAA's Education Page
• JetStream - A Weather Class for everyone produced by NWS Southern Region HQ

Things for Kids!

• NWS Kids Page
• Billy and Maria Learn About the Weather - Coloring Books!
• Owlie Skywarn Weather Safety Information. (pdf document)
• National StormReady Page
• Our Local StormReady Program Info