Severe Weather Center

The Severe Weather Center is a team activity in which individuals learn the importance of different climactic variables for accurately predicting a storm’s path.

The Severe Weather Center is an engaging activity that helps a visitor achieve a better understanding of the complexities of predicting a storm's path. While interacting with the Severe Weather Center, a visitor:

• Is introduced to the process of numerical modeling and climate prediction.
• Learns about key variables that influence hurricanes and their relative importance in hurricane prediction.
• Learns how data are collected and used in severe weather prediction.
• Manipulates different climactic variables to see their effects on a storm’s predicted path and landfall.
• Collects actual historical data from different ocean and land-based data-collection stations.
• Enters the data into a predictive model and then, with the group, makes a prediction about the path of the storm.
• Watches a 3D animation of the hurricane they just predicted.
• Evaluates the accuracy of the two hurricane-prediction models.