Well, it turns out that today, March 23, 2010, is full of special events -- it's Free Pastry Day at Starbucks (print out the coupon quickly & rush to order your coffee, the offer ends at 10:30 am!), Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's (good from noon until 8 pm, head there after you get your pastry at Starbucks!) and it's also World Meteorological Day 2010, as proclaimed by the World Meteorological Organization.
Sadly, apart from the kind folks on Twitter who alerted me to this special day, there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for World Weather Day -- no mentions on The Weather Channel or WeatherBug and not many hits on Google either.
That is just sad. Let's face it, no matter where you live on the globe, weather affects your daily life. Even the folks up on the International Space Station have to worry about weather when it's time to come home!
Yesterday's World Water Day received far more press, and water is just one component of weather. Weather is bigger than water! So, in honor of World Weather Day, let's start some new traditions:
* Visit a weather-themed science exhibit, like the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry's Science Storms, described by Kara Spak of the Chicago Sun-Times as "a science lab on steroids."
* Take a minute to look up at the sky. Is it partly cloudy or partly sunny? "Meteorologists like to say that the difference between 'partly cloudy' and 'partly sunny' is the forecaster's mood," according to this fun set of questions & answers from USATODAY.com.
* Watch Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.
* Browse the weather-themed topics on this blog. Don't miss The Science of Snow and How Big are Raindrops?
* Make your own book of weather words! How would you draw smoggy or snowy?
* Remember special weather days in your own history. Has weather played a crucial role on certain days of your life? I know it has for me! On the night before I married Itinerant Cryptographer, we had a big stormy cold snap. In the morning, there were no flowers (save some leftover funeral bouquets!) in the church where we were to be married. The florist's excuse was that the doors to the company van had frozen shut. They couldn't deliver the flowers until they'd warmed up the van -- and until half of our wedding pictures had already been taken.
However, you choose to celebrate, enjoy the weather today!
Photo credit: Bex Ross, via flickr //CC BY 2.0
2 comments:
Thanks for the info! As a teacher I never knew there were such a day. As I read your post my mind was racing with all kinds of great activities I could have done to celebrate world water day and world weather day together! Marked it in my calendar for next year!
Thanks for your comment, Daniele! I've started working on a post of annual scientific holidays and events, but it's not quite done yet. There are a lot of fun events out there, but they don't seem to be centrally located, do they? Here's two for your calendar: Environmental Education Week is April 11-17 this year and Earth Science Week is October 10-16, 2010.
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