Hands-On Weather Science
Our city has some of the most interesting weather in Canada, so let’s be scientists about it. Catch snowflakes, build a wind vane and a rain gauge, fly a kite in our famous wind, run your own weather station for a week, try a science fair project with real local data, and learn to read a summer storm like a junior weather spotter.
On this page
Before you start
Everything here uses things most of us already have at home: a jar, a ruler, a paper plate, some tape and a straw. Each project has a card you can print and tick off.
- Ages: kids 6 and up can do every project with a grown-up. Kids 10 and up can run the weather week and science fair projects mostly on their own.
- Grown-up jobs: anything with scissors, a straight pin or a knife. Grown-ups also choose where the instruments go, and do any climbing.
- Our secret weapon: a real weather station in West Lethbridge that you can check any time at westlethbridgeweather.com.
Catch and sort snowflakes
Here’s a fun one for the next snowy afternoon. A well-formed snow crystal has six sides. Snow scientist Kenneth Libbrecht of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) explains that water molecules like to hook up into a six-sided pattern, and that’s how the crystal gets its sixfold shape.
What you need
- A piece of black paper, or a dark piece of cardboard
- A magnifying glass. Caltech’s guide says 3 times magnification is okay, but 5 times is better.
- Warm clothes, a pencil and this card
What to do
- Chill your paper. The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (Manitoba) suggests freezing black paper overnight, so flakes don’t melt the moment they land.
- Go out while it’s snowing. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) says to hold the paper flat and keep your hands at the edges.
- Look closely with your magnifier, and don’t breathe on the flakes.
- Draw the shapes you see, then match them to the chart.
- Be patient. Caltech’s guide says not every snowfall brings nice crystals. If nothing interesting shows up in 5 minutes, try another day. You can even just let flakes land on your dark sleeve.
Snowflake shapes chart
The shape depends mostly on the temperature where the crystal grew, up in the cloud. That can be quite different from the temperature down here on the ground.
| Shape | What it looks like | Grows near |
|---|---|---|
| Plates and stars | Thin, flat crystals with six broad arms | −2°C and −15°C |
| Columns and needles | Six-sided rods, or thin needles like little white hairs on your sleeve | −5°C |
| Stellar dendrites | The classic snowflake: arms with lots of side branches | −12 to −16°C |
| Capped columns | A stubby column with a flat plate on each end, like a tiny spool | Forms when a column falls into air where plates grow |
| Rimed crystals and graupel | Crystals coated with frozen cloud droplets. Heavily coated ones look like tiny snowballs. | Any snowy cloud |
| Irregular | Small clumps with no neat shape. Caltech says these are the most common kind. | Any temperature |
Printable card: snowflake catch
- ☐ A star or plate
- ☐ A stellar dendrite with side branches
- ☐ A column or needle
- ☐ A capped column
- ☐ Graupel (a tiny snowball)
- ☐ An irregular clump
- ☐ I drew my best snowflake
Date: ______ Temperature on our station: ______ °C
Build a wind vane
Lethbridge is famous for wind, and our wind usually comes from the west or southwest. A wind vane shows you which way it’s blowing right now.
What you need
- A paper plate and a marker
- A plastic drinking straw
- A pencil with a new eraser on the end
- A straight pin (grown-up job)
- Thin cardboard (a cereal box works), scissors and tape
- A lump of modelling clay, and a compass or a compass app
What to do
- Make the compass plate. Draw a line across the middle of the plate, then another across it the other way, like a plus sign. Write N, E, S and W at the ends.
- Cut an arrow point and a tail from the cardboard. Make the tail bigger than the point.
- Attach them to the straw. The American Museum of Natural History’s instructions say to cut two small slits (about 1 cm) at each end of the straw, slide the point and tail in at the same angle, and tape them.
- Stand the pencil up in a lump of clay where the lines cross.
- A grown-up pushes the pin through the middle of the straw and into the eraser. Blow on it to check that it spins freely.
- Take it outside to an open spot, and turn the plate so N faces north on your compass. Put a rock on the plate so our wind doesn’t carry it off.
How to read it: the museum explains that the arrow points in the direction the wind is blowing from. If it points west, you have a west wind. That’s also how weather stations name the wind.
Printable card: wind vane
- ☐ Plate marked N, E, S, W
- ☐ Arrow spins freely
- ☐ Plate lined up with north
- ☐ My vane says the wind is from: ______
- ☐ Our station says the wind is from: ______
- ☐ Did they match?
Build a rain gauge and a snow ruler
We’re a semi-arid city, so every millimetre of rain counts. Here’s how to measure it yourself.
What you need
- A tall, clear container with straight sides (a plastic one is safest)
- A ruler marked in millimetres, tape and a permanent marker
- Optional: a funnel with an opening about as wide as the container
What to do
- Peel off any label, and run a strip of tape up the side, from bottom to top.
- Mark a scale. Line the bottom of the ruler up with the bottom of the container, and mark every 5 mm on the tape. Cover the marks with clear tape. (This follows the American Museum of Natural History’s instructions, in metric.)
- Find a good spot. CoCoRaHS, the volunteer rain-measuring network, says a gauge should be twice as far from an object as that object is tall, and that its top should be level. So if a fence is 2 metres tall, put the gauge at least 4 metres away. It should also be somewhere a bit sheltered from strong wind.
- Read it after the rain ends. Look straight at the water line and write down the millimetres.
- Empty it before the next rain.
Make a snow ruler
For snow, you need a ruler or a metre stick, and a light-coloured board about the size of a placemat to set on top of the old snow.
- Measure in several places and average them. The US National Weather Service, which trains volunteer snow observers, says to take readings in several typical spots and avoid drifts, plowed or shovelled areas, and spots under trees. In our wind, that takes some searching!
- New snow goes on the board. Measure the snow on the board, then clear it off and set it back on top of the snow for the next storm.
- Myth buster: you may hear that 10 cm of snow melts into 1 cm of water. The National Weather Service calls that a myth. It says the ratio can be 8 to 1 or less, or 20 to 1 or more. Try it: melt a full container of snow indoors and see what you get.
Printable card: rain and snow
- ☐ Rain gauge marked every 5 mm
- ☐ Set up away from fences, trees and roofs
- ☐ First rain measured: ______ mm on ______ (date)
- ☐ Snow depth in 3 spots: ____ ____ ____ cm. Average: ____ cm
- ☐ Snow board set out
- ☐ I melted snow and measured the water: ____ cm of snow made ____ mm of water
Kite flying in our wind
If there’s one place made for kites, it’s southern Alberta. The trick in our city is picking a day that’s breezy but not wild.
When Gary was a kid, they made their own kite.
“Wooden sticks and newspaper was all we had. It wasn’t fancy.”
“Needless to say, it doesn’t stand up like the nylon kites of today, but it was just a cool thing to be able to do it ourselves.”
What you need for a simple sled kite
- A large plastic garbage bag
- Three thin wooden dowels or straight, light sticks, about 65 cm long (the museum’s lesson uses three 66 cm dowels)
- Strong tape, a hole punch and scissors (grown-up help)
- Kite string, wound on a piece of cardboard, and a pair of gloves
What to do
- Cut the sail. A sled kite is a flat sail, a bit like a wide house shape, with the sticks running from top to bottom. The National Museum of the United States Air Force’s free sled kite lesson includes a full pattern, if you’d like exact measurements.
- Tape the sticks to the sail from top to bottom, with a strip of tape over each one.
- Reinforce the two side corners with tape, and punch a hole in each.
- Tie on a bridle. The museum’s lesson makes the bridle string five times as long as a stick, tied to both corners, with a loop in the middle for the flying line.
- Launch with a helper. Stand with your back to the wind, let your helper hold the kite up, and let the string out slowly as it climbs. The museum’s lesson says no running is needed. Before you start, check the field for holes and rocks you could trip on while you’re looking up.
Good kite wind
The National Museum of the United States Air Force says the best kite days have blue skies and gentle to moderate winds of about 13 to 29 km/h (8 to 18 mph), and puts sled kites at about 10 to 29 km/h. Check the wind on our station before you go. If the gusts are much stronger than that, save the kite for a calmer day.
Kite safety. Never fly a kite near power lines. The City of Medicine Hat’s electric utility says, “Never fly kites near overhead power lines.” Utility Safety Partners, Alberta’s utility safety group, says any activity within 7 metres of an overhead power line puts you at risk, because electricity can “jump” from the line to anything that conducts it. Never use wire or metal in your kite or its string, and keep the string dry. If a kite gets caught in a power line, the museum’s lesson says not to try to free it: let go, and have a grown-up call the power company. Also stay well away from roads, trees, people and airports (our airport is about 5 km south of the city), and never fly in wet or stormy weather. If a kite gets stuck in a tree, don’t pull on it or climb up after it. Gloves protect your hands from string burns.
Printable card: kite day
- ☐ Kite built and bridle tied
- ☐ Wind on our station: ______ km/h, gusts ______ km/h
- ☐ Open field, no power lines, roads or trees nearby
- ☐ Kite in the air!
- ☐ Which way did it fly? Wind from: ______
Be a weather station for a week
Real weather observers write things down at the same time every day. For one week, you’re one of them. Use your own eyes and instruments first, then check our live station and see how close you were.
Want a quick quiz using today’s readings? Try Weather Detective. This week-long log is the slow, careful version.
What to do
- Pick a time, such as right after school, and stick to it.
- Observe first. Look at the sky, read your wind vane and rain gauge, and decide how it feels outside.
- Then check the station at westlethbridgeweather.com and fill in its numbers.
- At the end of the week, circle the day you were closest. Which was the windiest day? Did a chinook show up?
Printable card: my weather week
| Day | Sky (sunny, cloudy, snowing…) | My wind vane: from | My gauge (mm) | Feels like (cold, cool, warm) | Station temperature (°C) | Station wind (km/h) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ☐ Mon | ||||||
| ☐ Tue | ||||||
| ☐ Wed | ||||||
| ☐ Thu | ||||||
| ☐ Fri | ||||||
| ☐ Sat | ||||||
| ☐ Sun |
Science fair projects with real local data
Most science fair weather projects use made-up or far-away numbers. You can use a real station in our own city. Each idea below has a question, the data to collect and a simple way to test it. Use the current weather page for readings, and the climate report for this month and season at the station.
How fast does a chinook warm us?
Data: temperature every hour on a chinook day, from early morning to late afternoon. Method: graph the temperature against time. Find the hour with the biggest jump. Do it for two or three chinooks and compare.
Is it windier in the afternoon?
Data: wind speed at 8 a.m., noon, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. for two weeks. Method: average each time of day and make a bar graph. Which time wins?
Dew point and frost
Data: the dew point at bedtime, the overnight low, and whether there was frost on the car or lawn in the morning, for a few weeks in fall. Method: make a table. On frosty mornings, how cold did it get, and what was the dew point the night before?
West side versus the airport
Data: overnight lows and wind speeds from both stations for two weeks, using the West Lethbridge versus airport page. Method: find the difference each day. Are calm, clear nights different from cloudy, windy ones?
Does my rain gauge agree?
Data: your gauge’s reading and the station’s rain total for every rainfall in a season. Method: list them side by side. Is yours always higher, lower or about the same? Can you explain why?
How much does a sunny day warm up?
Data: the daily high and low from the climate report, and whether each day was sunny or cloudy. Method: work out high minus low for each day, then compare the sunny days with the cloudy ones.
What it means for you: a good project changes just one thing at a time, collects data on lots of days, and admits what went wrong. Write down the date and time of every reading, and say in your report that the data came from the West Lethbridge station.
Printable card: my science fair plan
- ☐ My question: ______________________________
- ☐ What I will measure: ______________________
- ☐ How often, and for how many days: ________
- ☐ Data table made
- ☐ Graph drawn
- ☐ What I found: _____________________________
Junior weather spotter card
Our summer thunderstorms, and their hail, mostly come from June to August. Storm clouds are amazing to watch, from a safe place. Here’s what to look for, using definitions from the US National Weather Service’s storm spotter guides.
Towering cumulus
A big, puffy cloud growing tall, with a cauliflower look. It’s a sign the air is rising fast and a storm may be building.
Anvil
The flat, spreading top of a thunderstorm cloud, shaped like a blacksmith’s anvil. A cloud with an anvil has grown into a full thunderstorm cloud, called a cumulonimbus.
Hail shaft
A white area hanging below the storm where hail is falling. Time to be inside.
Gust front and shelf cloud
The gust front is the leading edge of a storm’s cold outflow, with a wind shift and gusty winds. It may carry a shelf cloud: a low, wedge-shaped cloud along the front of the storm.
When to go inside. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) says: “When thunder roars, go indoors!” Go into an enclosed building with wiring and plumbing, or an all-metal vehicle with a hard roof. ECCC warns that open structures like gazebos and picnic shelters won’t protect you. Wait at least 30 minutes after the last rumble before going back out. In hail, stay in a solid building and away from windows. Junior spotters never chase storms. You watch from indoors.
Grown-ups can report what you saw. ECCC takes severe weather reports from Albertans by email at ABstorm@ec.gc.ca or with #ABStorm on social media. Include the exact time and place. ECCC also works with trained volunteer spotters, including ham radio operators in its CANWARN network, which you can read about on our Radio Adventures page.
Printable card: junior spotter
- ☐ A towering cumulus (time: ______)
- ☐ An anvil top
- ☐ A shelf cloud, or gusty wind that suddenly changed direction
- ☐ A white hail shaft (seen from inside!)
- ☐ I heard thunder and went inside right away
- ☐ I waited 30 minutes after the last thunder
- ☐ A grown-up and I wrote down the time and place
Sources
- Caltech, Kenneth Libbrecht, A guide to snowflakes (snowflake types; temperatures for plates and needles): its.caltech.edu
- Caltech, Kenneth Libbrecht, Watching snowflakes (magnification, collection board, sleeve, 5 minutes): its.caltech.edu
- PBS NewsHour, The science of snowflakes (Libbrecht on six-sided symmetry; columns near −5°C, plates and stars near −15°C): pbs.org
- Colorado State University, CMMAP, Cloud microphysics: ice crystal shapes (dendrites at −12 to −16°C): colostate.edu
- UCAR Center for Science Education, Catching snowflakes: scied.ucar.edu
- Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Manitoba chapter, Winter snowflake exploration (freeze the paper overnight): cpawsmb.org
- American Museum of Natural History, OLogy, Make a wind vane: amnh.org
- American Museum of Natural History, OLogy, Make a rain gauge: amnh.org
- CoCoRaHS, via the US National Weather Service (Albany), Setting up your rain gauge: weather.gov
- US National Weather Service (Des Moines), Snow measurement training (several spots, avoid drifts, snow board, snow-to-water ratios): weather.gov
- National Museum of the United States Air Force, Science and math with a double-pocket sled kite (materials, bridle, wind range, safety): nationalmuseum.af.mil
- City of Medicine Hat, Power line safety (never fly kites near overhead power lines): medicinehat.ca
- Utility Safety Partners (Alberta), Look up and live (7 metres; electricity can arc or jump): utilitysafety.ca
- Lethbridge Airport, Directions (about 5 km south of Lethbridge): lethbridgeairport.ca
- US National Weather Service (Fort Worth), Storm spotter’s dictionary: weather.gov
- US National Weather Service (Des Moines), Spotter reference guide (hail shaft; shelf cloud): weather.gov
- Environment and Climate Change Canada, Lightning safety overview: canada.ca
- Environment and Climate Change Canada, Warm season weather hazards (hail safety): canada.ca
- Environment and Climate Change Canada, Reporting severe weather: overview: canada.ca
- Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Weather Amateur Radio Network (CANWARN): canada.ca
- Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Climate Normals 1991–2020, Lethbridge (low yearly precipitation; prevailing west and southwest wind): climate.weather.gc.ca
- Live readings and climate report: West Lethbridge weather station, westlethbridgeweather.com