By Tanya Butterfield, Kolby Fisher, Austin Findlen, Jacob Weymouth and Aiden Brown
New Sweden students
Students from New Sweden School, accompanied by teachers Mrs. Plante and Mrs. Fowler, and bus driver Mr. Margeson, spent some time one recent afternoon at local television station WAGM, where they interviewed meteorologist Ted Shapiro.
WAGM Meteorologist Ted Shapiro captivated his audience comprised of New Sweden School students with photos and weather facts during their recent visit to the television studio.
Mr. Shapiro explained weather elements to the children, showed them some interesting photographs and gave them a tour of the studio.
Tanya Butterfield asked Mr. Shapiro what snow thunder is.
“I learned that thunder snow has the same cloud formation as a regular thunderstorm and happens in the winter,” Butterfield said.
Austin Findlen asked Mr. Shapiro what kind of training was necessary to become a meteorologist.
“You need a four-year degree and sometimes you can go on to get your Master’s Degree in meteorology,” Findlen reported. “The closest college for meteorology is Lyndon State College in Vermont.”
Aidan Brown learned about the dangers of lightening.
“We learned from Ted Shapiro that lightning comes from the ground and works its way up,” Brown explained. “You would get a negative charge from the ground and a positive charge from the sky, and when they meet, lightning flashes. Ted told of a picture of a girl with her hair straight up in the air and that is because there was a lightning strike nearby. She was lucky she didn’t get hurt because if you can hear thunder, then you are in danger of a lightning strike,” Brown continued. “You should go inside away from the storm until you count 30 minutes from the last sound of thunder. That means the storm has passed by and you are safe.”
Kolby Fisher learned about weather balloons.
“All weather stations use Greenwich Mean Time, the time along the prime meridian, to release their weather balloons to get accurate data about the atmosphere,” Fisher said. “The prime meridian runs through the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, near London.”
Jacob Weymouth learned about how Mr. Shapiro gets his information from different viewing areas.
“To be a weather spotter, anyone can communicate with Ted Shapiro through Facebook to give him rain and snow totals at a certain time during the day,” Weymouth explained. “He likes this information to use on the news at night and in the morning. I would like to be a weather spotter.”
The students also learned the formula to change degrees from Celsius to Fahrenheit: C X 9/5 + 32, double it, take away 2 of the doubled amount, then add 32.
New Sweden students, from left, front, Tanya Butterfield, Kolby Fisher and Austin Findlen; back row, Jacob Weymouth and Aidan Brown, got to experience what it’s like to sit behind the anchor desk when they visited WAGM TV to interview meteorologist Ted Shapiro about his job of forecasting the weather for the local area.
