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Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words · Rapid City, SD

Why I love weather

Hurricane Juliette photographed from the Terra satellite as a huge white spiral of cloud with a clear eye at its centre. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Weather" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.
Hurricane Juliette photographed from the Terra satellite as a huge white spiral of cloud with a clear eye at its centre. NASA/JPL-Caltech · Public domain
  • It is different tomorrow and someone can tell me why.
  • The sky is doing something I can measure.
  • A guess with a reason is called a forecast.

You can love weather in Rapid City.

What it really is

Weather is the atmosphere moving heat and water around, and it can be measured.

Three things to try today

  1. Write down tomorrow's temperature guess tonight.
  2. Check it tomorrow.
  3. Do it for a week and count how often you were close.
NASA meteorologists release a white weather balloon into the sky to check conditions before a research flight. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Weather" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.
NASA meteorologists release a white weather balloon into the sky to check conditions before a research flight. NASA · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

The Rapid City, SD metro area has about 156,934 residents, ranking 280th in the country. Somewhere in that number is a kid who lights up about weather and has never met another one.

Keeping score on your own forecasts is real practice in probabilistic thinking.

If the kid who loves this is a girl

Read what one popular teacher said to one little girl who took out the classroom trash without being asked — and what that girl did with the rest of her life.

Girls are great at math — Rapid City, SD →

Love something else too

The branching channels of the Godavari River delta meeting the Bay of Bengal, photographed by the crew of space shuttle Endeavour. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Rivers" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love riversThe dark ragged skyline of a Douglas fir forest at Point Reyes, California, silhouetted against a pale grey sky. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Forests" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love forestsA honeybee queen marked with a yellow dot on her back, surrounded by worker bees on the honeycomb. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Bees" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love beesA cultivated agricultural field stretching to the horizon with a wetland strip along its edge. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Farming" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love farmsAn alligator moving through a brackish waterway at Kennedy Space Center, only its eyes and back above the water. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Animals" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love animalsRed leaf lettuce, mizuna mustard and green lettuce growing under pink-white LED lights in the Veggie plant growth hardware. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Plants" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love plantsA pair of American bald eagles perched on the rim of their large stick nest on Kennedy Space Center property. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Birds" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love birdsA blacktip reef shark swims just under the sunlit surface, above a head of coral, at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Sharks" page — read by families in Rapid City, SD.Why I love sharks

Near Rapid City

Why I love weather, everywhere in the US · All things to love · STEM jobs you could do · Summer camps in Rapid City