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You can’t see the wind. We know it’s there because we can feel it, sometimes we can hear it, and we can see things that it moves: a bag blowing in the breeze, or trees swaying. Even what you see when you see a tornado is water droplets, dust, dirt, and debris that’s traveling along with the funnel cloud winds. Meteorologists need to use tools to measure the wind so they can predict the weather since they can’t see it. They can use simple tools to measure the wind’s direction, speed, temperature, pressure and humidity. They use more complex tools, like weather radar, to get a big picture of what the wind movement looks like over a large area. Radar can help them see where clouds are and where they’re going to be, how nasty storms are, and it even helps them look for small cells where the wind is starting to rotate, which means a tornado might form there.
Today, we’re going to get you started with your own homemade weather station. We’re going to build a tool called an anemometer. An anemometer measures the speed of the wind. It has cups that catch the wind and spin around a center pole. Since the cups can catch the wind from any direction, an anemometer won’t tell you the way the wind is blowing, but it will give you a simple way to observe just how fast it’s going!
The instructions can be found at Pi’Ikea Street. There is a power tool involved in this project, so make sure you have an adult with you!
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