>> Welcome to "Family Night: Weather & Climate."

Over the next hour, we'll learn all kinds of things about the weather.

What causes different kinds of weather?

What's the difference between weather and climate?

>> Weather is the minute to minute, day to day atmospheric condition outside.

Climate is the average weather over a region for a long time.

>> They say weather is your mood, climate is your personality.

>> We'll also hear about some great weather careers and have fun with hands-on activities that you can do without any special tools or supplies.

So here we go.

Stay tuned for "Family Night: Weather & Climate."

>> Support for "Family Night: Weather & Climate" comes from the Pennsylvania Department of Education and viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Hello, everybody.

My name is Brian Cizek.

I am a meteorologist and Launch Weather Officer for the 45th Weather Squadron at Cape Canaveral, which is a part of the United States Space Force.

One of my first memories that I can remember in my entire life is from the blizzard of 1996.

I just remember walking out into my driveway.

My dad had just shoveled and I just remember the snow being way above my head.

I just was looking up and I had never seen anything like that before.

And it was truly incredible.

And I think maybe that's what kind of started my path at being interested in weather later on in my life.

I just remember becoming fascinated with the weather, watching the Weather Channel, watching some of the local news stations, wondering if we're going to get a snow day tomorrow, if we'll be able to go out sledding with my friends.

So it was definitely an interest I'd had from a pretty young age.

When I got to Conestoga High School, I actually got involved with our TV program.

I stood outside in the conditions, gave the weather report to the entire school, and I had a lot of fun with that.

And then eventually I made my way to Penn State University and I studied meteorology there and got my meteorology degree and eventually had my current job now.

So it was a fun journey and I'm very fortunate to be where I am.

My last year at Penn State, I was actually working on weekends at some local news stations, and I was planning to go the TV route.

But then this opportunity became available down at Cape Canaveral with the 45th Weather Squadron to be a Launch Weather Officer and do some of the weather for all the rocket launches down there and I thought that sounded really, really cool.

And I decided to pursue that.

And I was lucky enough to get to the position that I currently am in right now.

So, it is our job to make sure those rockets get into space safely, and the rockets have to go through the atmosphere.

And you certainly wouldn't want to be launching the rocket through a thunderstorm, which we get a lot of in Florida.

But we're also concerned about what's called a triggered lightning strike because it's moving through the atmosphere at a high speed.

You have a metal rocket.

It's connected to the launch plume that comes out of the rocket that goes to the ground.

That can actually induce a lightning strike that would not have naturally occurred.

So it's our job to make sure that doesn't happen and to make sure the conditions, the atmospheric conditions or the weather is safe for that rocket to get into space.

Let's say if we are preparing for a launch leading up to a launch, we are doing a lot of the forecast.

But I should mention it's not just the launch that we're concerned with.

That's kind of just the tip of the iceberg.

A lot of times think if you're on a sports team or if you're in a dance group or if you're part of a play, think about all the practice that goes into it.

The launch is just like the game day or the final recital or the final show.

There's a lot of things that are involved before the launch that we need to be a part of.

For instance, when you roll out the different parts of the rocket, when you stack it on top of each other, any time that rocket is exposed outside, we need to be concerned about the weather.

And particularly being in Florida, which is actually the lightning capital of North America, lightning can be very dangerous to rocket parts and can damage it.

So it's our job to make sure all of those operations leading up to the launch happen safely.

Then, of course, we are forecasting for the launch itself.

And then during the countdown, we are on console, as we call it.

We are communicating with the launch director and the launch team and we are evaluating the weather conditions and making sure that it's safe.

And then we're also involved with the recovery aspects.

So let's say they bring the capsule that splashes back down in the ocean.

It might have astronauts in it.

It might have cargo.

So we're involved with making sure that that gets back to Earth safely as well, and that can be very weather-sensitive and weather-dependent as well.

So weather plays a big part in all different aspects of launch operations.

They say weather is your mood, climate is your personality.

So another example -- If you're a baseball fan, weather would be like how you do in one particular game.

You might go 4 for 4, you might 0 for 4, where climate would be your long-term batting average.

So climate's just the long-term averages, the long term of the different weather patterns.

If you're interested in going into the field of meteorology, you're going to want to study math.

Certainly focus on your math throughout middle school and high school.

Also, what you want to be involved in science is physics because, really, the atmosphere, the way it moves, the way weather happens is all based on the laws of physics.

So you're going to want to make sure you're strong in physics, even a little -- even chemistry as well.

And that will set you up well as you go into a college meteorology program.

I went to school with a lot of people who maybe they weren't the strongest in math, maybe they weren't the strongest in physics or science, but they worked really, really hard at it, got through it, and now they're some of the best meteorologists that I know.

So even if maybe you don't love math, but you have a passion in weather, I would just say really stick with it, don't give up, keep working hard.

But maybe if you really don't want anything to do with math, there's other routes you can take.

You could be a climate and weather journalist.

You could write about it.

So there are other options to take.

If you get the weather bug, just stick with it and keep working hard in school.

As I said, sometimes it can get hard, especially on the math and science thing, but stick with it and it'll pay out in the end.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Looking for weather patterns.

What's the weather like in your neighborhood?

Let's make a weather chart to record the weather for 30 days and find out.

It's a great way to observe different kinds of weather and temperature over time.

Use a piece of paper to make a grid and put the date in the corner of each block.

Decide on a key for your chart.

Maybe a sun for sunny, a cloud for cloudy, raindrops for rainy, and a wavy line for windy.

Pick a date and start observing.

Draw the picture that represents most of your days' weather.

You can also record the day's high temperature by adding color.

Make your shape blue for 40 degrees and under, purple for 41 to 50 degrees, yellow for 51 to 60 degrees, orange for 61 to 70 degrees, light red for 71 to 80 degrees, and dark red for 81 to 90 degrees.

Be sure to write your key down to help you remember.

Keep observing and drawing what you see until the entire grid is full.

Then take a look at what the weather chart reveals.

Did it get warmer?

Colder?

Was it back and forth?

Was it mostly rainy or sunny?

What patterns do you see in your weather picture chart?

♪♪ The atmosphere of the Earth, which we usually call air, is the layer of gases around our planet.

It keeps us warm.

It creates the perfect environment for liquid water to exist and protects us from some of the harsh radiation put out by the sun.

It has five main layers.

The exosphere, the thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere and troposphere.

The exosphere is the highest layer.

It's far enough above the Earth that the weather experiences we have here on Earth don't actually happen here.

A large number of the satellites that have been put into space are in this layer.

The thermosphere is just below the exosphere.

There are no clouds or water vapor in this layer, like the exosphere.

It's too far above the Earth for that.

There are also many satellites in this area, as well as the International Space Station's orbit, which averages 248 miles above the Earth.

The mesosphere is the third highest layer of the atmosphere.

The top of this layer is considered the coldest place on Earth, with an average temperature of minus-120 degrees Fahrenheit.

This layer contains the highest clouds in the atmosphere and is where most meteors headed toward Earth burn up.

The stratosphere is the second lowest layer.

This layer contains the ozone layer, which is the layer of gas that protects us from the harsh radiation of the sun.

The stratosphere is the highest area where jets can fly.

And because of its stable, warmer temperatures, there's very little of the weather we experience.

The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere and actually reaches the Earth's surface.

This is where most planes and jets fly.

The temperature goes down the higher you get in this layer.

Since the heat here comes from the Earth.

Almost all of the water vapor found in the atmosphere is in the troposphere.

That's why this layer is where the Earth's weather patterns take place.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Hello.

My name is Brianna Amingwa.

I am the environmental education supervisor at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum.

I'm originally from Michigan, the Metro Detroit area, which is a really big city, kind of like Philadelphia.

And I spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about animals.

I love cats and dogs.

I would try to, like, rescue any little stray cats out there.

My mom always told me, no, we cannot bring them in our house.

[ Laughs ] Watched a ton of Animal Planet and got to see, you know, guys like Steve Irwin and all kinds of people who would explore nature and be outside.

So I was always interested in animals and wildlife, but I didn't really know that being a park ranger was possible and that this job existed.

And so when I went to college, I got a scholarship to study animal science.

So I was really excited to do that.

And I studied a lot of livestock animals like chickens and horses and pigs, cows, all that stuff.

And I had a chance to do an internship.

So my first internship when I was in college, which is like kind of a summer job you work while you're in college, was working with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service and working on a national wildlife refuge in Ohio.

And while I was there, I got to work in biology and I got to experience being really deep in nature.

And that's when I really got excited to keep doing this work and realizing how much wildlife is connected to the weather and the climate.

Right?

There's a lot of change happening in our climate with it getting warmer and animals are reacting accordingly.

So even in my, you know, 5 or 10 years of working in this kind of job, we've seen lots of changes with animals because of the weather and the climate.

One thing I remember is I was working on like a job detail in New York, actually in Long Island, and there was this new beetle that had come to the area that had never been there before.

And it was called the southern pine beetle.

And you think southern, what's it doing all the way up in New York?

One of the reasons it was there is because the climate is warming.

So the plants and animals, in particular this little bug that used to live down south, now it's getting warmer and warmer as you go further north.

So this little beetle was starting to move all the way up the East Coast and into New York, and it was causing a lot of problems.

So the southern pine beetle had gotten into the state of New York and was starting to get into trees there and causing lots of death in the trees.

So I had gone there to help them with their visitor services and messaging to help them tell people what was going on and to make sure that nobody was moving wood back and forth and transporting the beetle even further into that area.

So that beetle is basically what's called a non-native species.

So it's not native to New York.

It's meant to live further south where the trees are adjusted to it, but because the climate's warming, that beetle moves further and further because it's warm and it's like, "Okay, this is my kind of place.

I can live here" even though it shouldn't be there and the trees aren't ready to protect themselves and they can be really damaged by that.

So yeah, think about our food chains and food webs.

So all the animals that are naturally in the area where you live know how to kind of have some population control.

So they have an animal that eats it and eats it and eats it, and it all kind of stays in check, but when you have an animal that's introduced that is not supposed to be there, other animals don't know how to react.

It might not have what's called a natural predator or something that's supposed to eat it to stop it from getting too big and having too many.

And it might not have anything to stop it from growing out of control, and that's what was happening with the southern pine beetle, is that it had gotten into those trees and there was nothing there that was able to stop it or eat it fast enough.

And that's what caused the problem and killed a lot of trees in New York.

But it doesn't always have, you know, bad effects because sometimes it just changes the timing of things, right?

Like, you might have noticed sometimes that our spring is a little bit shorter and winter ends a little faster, or winter is not as cold as it used to be.

And sometimes that just changes how nature's timing is different, and that's called phenology.

That's the timing of things in nature and when they happen.

So we might notice is things like birds are migrating back sooner, coming back from the south, back here even sooner, which makes a lot of people happy because they love seeing those birds all summer long.

So, my typical day at work starts early.

We start work at 7:30 in the morning and I get in and do a little bit of preparation for the schools that are going to visit us.

We have tons of schools come out for field trips.

Usually in one year, maybe 18,000 kids will visit the refuge for field trips or different activities.

We'll go hiking.

Sometimes we'll go out into the marsh and use nets and try to catch the little creatures that live in the water.

We'll use binoculars to check out birds.

We'll look at live crayfish, all kinds of really cool stuff.

So if you want to be a park ranger or a biologist or somebody who works on a national wildlife refuge, you will have to get a degree.

So that's a really important part of it, is getting good grades in school and then going to college so you can get your degree like a bachelor's degree, which would take four years.

Now, there's all kinds of different degrees you could get within that.

You could get a degree in biology or education or conservation.

Even some people get degrees in what's called parks and tourism.

So there's lots of different kind of programs you can go into, but usually you'll have to have a four-year degree to get a job as a park ranger.

And then you kind of have to be willing to move a little bit because parks are all over the country and refuges are all over the country.

You might have to move to somewhere new and different for one of those jobs, which is kind of a cool part because you get to see so many different habitats and wildlife when you do move.

I think kids should care about the weather the same reason they should care about nature because it is all around us and it affects everything we do, right?

Even in just your regular year of school, on days when there's bad weather, you might miss school.

You might not be able to get there.

You might not be able to travel.

And between that, you know, nature is so caught up in our lives and we're so connected to nature that if plants and animals are affected by the weather, then we count in that, too.

You know?

We can do a lot to help and to help the climate and to help, you know, our weather and climate.

And we're not, you know, just here completely out of control with it.

We can also help even as kids, you know, keeping an eye on our carbon footprint if you've heard that before.

Right?

Making sure that we are being good stewards, good caretakers of the Earth, doing things like recycling and reusing, using less stuff than we may not need, not being very wasteful and also whenever we can, doing things like walking places or biking places.

You can learn so much by just going outside.

And one thing I like to tell people to recommend is to find one place in nature that you can go back and visit, right, and go back and visit it once a week maybe or once a month, and see how nature changes that spot, even if it's just the same little tree that's down the street from your house or in your neighborhood.

Go back and check on it and see what's happening that's new.

Once you start paying more attention to nature and making what's called close observations, looking really closely, that is when you start to kind of train your eyes and your mind to keep your eye on nature and to see what's happening, to see all the changes that happen.

One of my favorite things about nature is that you don't have to go far to find it.

You can go right outside your door.

You can go anywhere in the city, anywhere in a park, anywhere that's literally just outside.

And you can find nature that's right there.

I want you to find some cool nature outside where you are.

And it can be tiny, it can be big.

It can be flying over your head or crawling on the ground.

But just go outside and find one cool thing in nature that is living near you and try to check it out.

Make a note about it or draw about it or write about or just tell somebody what you found.

And that would make Ranger Bri's little heart sing and make me so happy if you could go out and just do that one thing for me -- find nature where you are.

Check it out at your school or outside your house or on your way home from school, on your route that you walk.

Wherever you can find it, find a little piece of nature.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> A tornado is a column of air that violently spins.

It is usually connected to the bottom of a thunderstorm and also touches the ground.

They have the ability to cause major damage.

The strongest tornadoes can throw cars, rip buildings off their foundations and pull large trees right out of the ground.

They are sometimes called twisters, whirlwinds or cyclones.

They spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, which is the top half of the Earth, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere.

You can tell it's a tornado because it will usually have a funnel cloud.

Most tornadoes occur in North America, especially in the central United States, in an area called Tornado Alley.

It runs approximately from northern Texas into South Dakota.

This area has flat land, not many hills or mountains.

In this region, warm, wet air from the south mixes with cool, dry air from the north.

The warm air rises, the cool air sinks and a violent storm is created.

If the warm air and cool air move at different speeds, the spinning column of air that is a tornado is formed.

People have said that tornadoes sound like a freight train, a waterfall or even a jet engine.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Let's make a weather vane.

Ever wonder which way the wind is coming from?

We can use a weather vane to find out.

A weather vane is an instrument that shows from which direction the wind is blowing.

They're often placed on top of tall buildings at the highest point.

To build your homemade weather vane, with the help of a grown-up, you'll want to gather the following materials.

A pencil with an eraser.

Two small pieces of cardstock or heavy paper about four inches by four inches.

Or maybe an index card if you have one of those handy.

A straw, a pin, a stapler, a paper plate and a marker.

From the two pieces of cardstock, cut one square and one triangle.

♪♪ ♪♪ Then staple the square cardstock to one end of the straw and the triangle end of the cardstock to the other end of the straw.

With the cardstock stapled in place, use your finger as a fulcrum to find the balance point on the straw.

Once you've found the balance point, push the pin through that part of the straw and then insert the pin into the eraser of the pencil.

You'll want to make sure you leave some room between the pencil and the top of the pin.

If you push the pin in too far, your weather vane won't spin.

Next label the cardinal directions on a paper plate.

Cardinal directions are north, east, south and west.

You can use a compass to position the paper plate the correct way, then stick the pointed end of the pencil through the paper plate and into the ground.

Then sit back and watch how the wind blows the weather vane to know what direction the wind is coming from.

This simple hands-on science is an easy and fun way to discover which way the wind's a-blowin'.

>> Hi, my name is Marisa Ferger and I am a meteorologist at Penn State University.

I teach weather communications and I also produce and forecast for a TV show that airs across the state of Pennsylvania called "Weather World."

I grew up on the East Coast in a little coastal community in New York, and there was just always exciting weather going on.

But when I was 10 years old, there was a hurricane that was approaching, Hurricane Gloria, and my town was actually put under an evacuation order.

So we had to leave.

And I just remember the days leading up to this and hearing about this storm and the potential for it.

The Weather Channel was pretty new back then.

And I remember watching the Weather Channel and writing things down and drawing my own maps and running to my parents and saying, you know, "I think this is what's going to happen.

This is what they're saying.

You know, this is the forecast."

And just the days leading up to it to me was just so exciting.

Ever since then, I just have fallen in love with the excitement of the weather and how there are so many unknowns.

And I wanted to learn more about why the atmosphere behaves the way it does.

So I knew by the time I was in high school that pursuing meteorology was something I was going to do.

When you are a weather forecaster, there are many different ways in which you can do it.

There's what most of us know of as the TV weather, which is the person on the nightly news or morning news that is presenting the weather forecast.

There are private forecasting companies all across the United States.

There are some people who just forecast for ski resorts, golf courses, the military, space flight.

They have their own set of weather forecasters, airlines.

Our government has the National Weather Service, which provides not only forecasts but watches and warnings for different types of severe weather.

There is just a huge land out there of types of weather forecasting.

In order to forecast the weather, the very most important first thing you need to do is look what's happening now.

You need to know what the temperature is.

You need to know what the winds are.

You need to look at the sky coverage.

Is it clear?

Is it cloudy?

What type of clouds?

You need to know what's going on between right here at the ground but then also way up into the atmosphere.

So when you see planes flying really high in the sky and they look like they're just little specks, you need to know what's happening way up there because the atmosphere works together.

What's happening way up where the airplanes are affects what's happening here at the surface.

And then we also have instruments called satellites, which are out in space and they're taking photographs and videos of the clouds.

And so we know where those clouds are.

We can see where weather systems are moving.

There's also radar.

Radar is an instrument that can show us where precipitation is happening.

We take the information of what's happening now.

And then there's these long mathematical equations that are put into these computer programs and it spits out different scenarios.

And so our job as weather forecasters is to interpret what they're saying and to use that as a guide for what we think our forecast is going to be.

My current job, I have two main roles.

One of them is that I teach weather communications classes.

It's not just TV stuff.

It's writing stories about the weather.

It's being able to take these scientific things and turning it into something that your average person can understand, meaning being able to explain something scientific to your grandma or to your best friend.

The other half of my job is that I'm a producer and forecaster for a TV show that's gone on across the state of Pennsylvania since 1983 called "Weather World."

If you want to be a weather forecaster, which is what I am, you can have a bachelor's degree, which is a four-year college degree.

If you want to go into research or you want to go into some more higher-level forecasting, you may need a master's degree or what's called a PhD, which is just extra schooling to get another degree.

Weather is what's happening now or in the next couple of days.

You know, is it going to be raining?

Is it going to be sunny?

What's happening with the wind?

Climate is what happened over a long period of time.

Here at Penn State, we've been taking weather records, you know, outside of this building that I'm sitting in for almost 130 years.

Every morning, somebody goes out and they get the temperature, you know, the high temperature, the low temperature.

We do all that.

We keep it in a big file.

Well, that big file of 130 years worth of information -- that's our climate data.

You can compare, you know, what happened on this day to what happened on this day 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.

You can learn a lot about a place from getting that data.

The neat thing about the weather is that it affects every single one of us every single day.

Over time, there are changes that are happening, and so we're going to care about that because heavy-rain events are becoming more frequent.

That's important because if you live in a flood zone, that might become a problem.

Same thing if you like to vacation at the beach.

Let's say you rent the same vacation house every single year.

Well, sea levels are rising.

So will that same house be there when you're a grandma and you want to take your grandkids to the beach?

All of us can be making a difference right now.

One of the biggest things we can do is, if you have the ability to walk somewhere or ride a bike somewhere instead of driving, go ahead and do that.

Or if you have a lot of errands to run, try to run them all at one time so you're making one car trip instead of going back and forth from home to wherever you need to go.

Try to carpool with other people.

You can have a garden in your house and try to grow some of your own plants and plant some trees in your yard.

One thing I would just tell kids in general is to just pay attention to the weather and notice the different changes every single day that are happening.

It's just neat to see that one day may be sunny, and the next day may be cloudy.

And it may be cloudy and warm compared to the cold, sunny day you had yesterday.

And just start wondering, "Why is that?"

The most exciting part of my job is that every day is different and I'm learning something new all the time.

I'm never going to see the same thing happen over and over again, and that's what makes this field really exciting.

>> Hi.

My name is Dr. Erika Podest, and I'm a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I study our planet and the impacts of climate change on different ecosystems of our planet.

And I use satellite images to do these studies.

Climate change -- so, let's take a step back.

Let's talk about global warming.

So, what's happening is, we have something here on our planet called the greenhouse effect, and it is necessary for life on our planet.

If it weren't for the greenhouse effect, it would probably be too cold for us humans to survive.

And, so, this greenhouse effect is a layer of gases around our planet, and some of these gases trap heat.

There's a natural concentration of these gases, but what's happening is that this concentration is increasing, and so things are getting warmer.

These gases are called greenhouse gases.

The one that we have a very strong effect on is carbon dioxide.

Carbon has been stored in the surface of our planet for thousands, millions of years, and in a very short time frame, we've been taking that, in the form of fossil fuels, primarily, and burning it.

And, so, releasing what was stored, we're putting it back in the atmosphere.

One of the ways we're burning fossil fuels is through the use of our vehicles, of gas-powered vehicles or diesel-powered vehicles.

One of the great things about working at NASA is that I get to use satellite data, which is like a whole new way of studying our planet.

What these satellites do is, they collect information about our atmosphere, oceans, and the continents.

What I specifically do is, I study terrestrial ecosystems -- vegetation, deserts, grasslands.

So I'm talking about the continents, the impacts of increasing temperatures, especially in vegetation in the northern latitudes -- Canada, Alaska, Eurasia.

And, so, these areas are ground zero for warming.

They are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

And so what are the impacts of that warming in the vegetation in these ecosystems?

The growing season, that period of time when the vegetation is growing, it's taking up CO2 from the atmosphere.

It's acting as a filter.

That period of time is pretty short in those latitudes.

There are changes in that growing season, in that period of time when that vegetation is taking up CO2.

Increasing temperature is causing the soils to thaw in large areas in the northern high latitudes and releasing that carbon that had been stored there in a very short period of time.

I am originally from a small country in Central America called Panama.

My parents would take me out camping, and they were very outdoors.

And so I fell in love with the outdoors and I always knew that I wanted a job that had something to do with our natural environment.

After graduating from high school in Panama, I left the country to come to the United States to pursue my studies.

And I discovered this amazing field called remote sensing, which is the use of satellite data to study our planet.

And that's where I then focused both my master's and my PhD degrees.

And I came across this project at NASA that was focused on the study of rainforests.

I wrote to them.

I told them about my interest.

And, so, they accepted me.

So, I started out as an intern at NASA, and that opportunity led to other opportunities until, eventually, I got hired on.

Climate change has an impact in everyone's lives.

And when we're talking about water availability and drought, I mean, these are things that are important.

When these patterns of rain change and there is these prolonged droughts, then that has an impact on the growth of our food.

We want a healthy environment because it has a direct impact on our health, whether it's air quality, whether it's water quality.

All of these things have an impact on our health and our well-being.

My advice to kids out there that are interested in STEM is that it's such a great career, anything in STEM, and is so relevant now more than ever and even more so in the future with all of the challenges that we're facing, that there's so many opportunities in STEM for studying our planet and making this world a better place.

Diversity and collaboration and working with people from all over the world is so important, especially in these type of topics.

If you're studying the planet and if you're studying the impacts of climate change, it goes beyond boundaries.

It is not just about one country.

It's about the entire world.

We're so interconnected.

Looking back, I think that little girl would be just very happy.

I never thought I would be working at NASA in a position, in a career studying our planet, using technology.

>> Let's do a rain-cloud experiment.

This simple, fun weather activity is a great way to understand how clouds and rain are connected.

Here's a list of supplies you'll need -- a Mason jar or a clear cup, water, white shaving cream, and food coloring.

To get started, fill your cup, Mason jar, or container 3/4 of the way full with water.

Now add a shaving-cream cloud to the top of the water in the remaining space.

Then add several drops of food coloring to the top of the shaving cream.

Then sit back and watch what happens.

When the clouds get too heavy, saturated with liquid, the drops fall through the cloud just like rain.

When water droplets get too heavy in the sky, gravity pulls them down from the clouds as rain.

How many drops of food coloring did it take you to fill your cloud and make it rain?

There are 10 main kinds of clouds.

Three of these are considered high-level clouds.

They are cirrus, cirrocumulus, and cirrostratus.

All three usually appear thin and white.

Cirrus clouds might look like string or a white patched area.

They are usually narrow.

Cirrus clouds are made from ice crystals and are the clouds that look bright yellow or red as the sun is coming up or going down.

Cirrocumulus clouds are also usually narrow and typically looked rippled or granulated, which means in the form of grains, kind of like sugar.

Any precipitation formed by these clouds doesn't reach the surface of the Earth.

Cirrostratus clouds are the third of the high-level clouds.

These clouds are transparent, which means you can see through them.

They usually form like a large veil that covers the sky.

The light from the sun or moon usually makes it look like there's a big circle of clouds in the sky.

This is called a halo effect.

The next three kinds of clouds are called mid-level clouds.

They are called altocumulus, altostratus, and nimbostratus.

Altocumulus clouds are usually white and gray and form in a sheet, part of which looks like it's made of a round of masses or rolls.

Altostratus clouds are usually gray or bluish.

The sun can be seen through them, but it will look fuzzy, and the light is diffused enough that shadows can't be seen on the ground.

Nimbostratus are dark-gray clouds formed when altostratus clouds thicken.

Rain or snow often falls from them and diffuse any light that could pass through them.

So the sun or the moon are not visible through these clouds.

Our final set of clouds are called low-level clouds.

They are cumulus, cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, and stratus clouds.

Cumulus clouds look bright white where the sun hits them, but their bottoms are dark.

The weather is usually pretty good when you see these clouds.

They float individually and sometimes look puffy or like cotton.

Cumulonimbus clouds are very thick and usually form thunderstorms.

They can also produce hail and tornadoes.

Their bases are flat, and they are usually shaped like a tower.

Stratocumulus clouds are usually gray or off-white.

They form in patches or clumps and are the most common clouds on Earth.

They don't usually make precipitation, but if they do, it's light.

Stratus clouds usually form a cloud layer, have a uniform base, and can produce drizzle.

They often make days overcast, a word to describe a gray day, with their hazy, foggy look.

Stratus clouds sometimes come into contact with the ground.

So, there you have it, the 10 different kinds of clouds.

There's so many.

>> So hi.

My name is Dr. Daniel Vecellio.

I'm a biometeorologist, who looks at the interactions between weather and climate and living things, specifically humans, and I work at Penn State University.

My current research looks at the impacts of extreme heat on both younger and older populations.

So as climate changes and temperatures start to get warmer, our bodies can only take so much heat and be able to cool ourselves down.

So what my research is focusing on nowadays is, how much heat can the human body withstand and looking at all the factors of how the body cools itself down.

Being able to cool yourself down, your ability to do so degrades as you age.

So young people are able to withstand hotter temperatures and higher humidities than older people.

This research is very important, considering continued climate change that we're seeing here on Earth.

There's research that has shown that heat waves are expected to be longer, be more frequent, and be of higher temperatures in the future.

So extreme heat is a very big problem.

We want to make sure we can keep everyone healthy, whether that be kids playing on the playground or older persons, you know, living in retirement communities or places like that.

Growing up, me and my dad -- whenever a thunderstorm would come through town, he would pull me out on the porch.

And I was very scared of thunderstorms growing up, as most kids are.

But he wanted me to get over my fear.

So he would have me come out to the front porch with him and just watch as the storm went by and watch the rain go by and listen to the thunder and the lightning.

And that was one way I started to develop a passion with the weather is overcoming my fear of severe weather and things of that sort.

It would be my advice to be able to do something that you're passionate about if you wanted to be able to do it and enjoy it for the rest of your life.

So it's great if you know those things early, but sometimes, you also don't figure those things out till later.

Part of my passion is being able to help other people.

So I was able to combine these two looking at the field of biometeorology, looking at how the weather affects people and how it can help keep people safe from extreme heat.

I've also done some studies on looking at the impacts of weather on influenza patterns, so the flu we get every wintertime.

We know why and what weather patterns sort of exacerbate those types of things.

Again, it's about making sure you find your passion, and it comes from different places and you can combine it all together, that's even better.

What we do is, we run experiments here in our lab.

We have two rooms and we're able to increase temperature or increase humidity in these chambers with people in them, both young people and older people, doing a bunch of different activities, maybe just sitting down in a chair, maybe pedaling a bike, maybe walking on a treadmill, things that you do every single day, whether you're a young person or an old person.

We are able to give them some temperature sensors, where we figure out what their internal body temperature -- how that rises as they're in the heat there, along with skin-temperature probes so we can see how hot their skin heats up.

And we look at, at what point do we see a person's inside temperature start to rise uncontrollably or get really, really big really, really fast, which signify the upper limits of the heat that a person can sustain?

So in the future, we definitely will see higher temperatures, especially during the summertime.

And we may have to, you know, learn to live our lives a little bit differently.

Especially for us here in the North, who are not used to higher temperatures.

it's going to hit us a whole lot harder than it might hit someone in Florida or Texas or Arizona, who are used to higher temperatures already and it's only going to get, you know, maybe a little bit hotter relative to where it is now.

So, there will be different things that we'll have to do for different sorts of people who live in different geographic regions.

Weather and climate both talk about the conditions of the atmosphere -- the temperature, the humidity, the rain, the cloud cover.

Everything that you see in the sky and feel outside -- weather and climate and describe them both.

But a good analogy is that weather is kind of like your mood throughout the day.

Weather can change over an hourly time scale or a daily time scale, just as you get really, really happy, then really, really sad if something occurs on, you know, a minute-to-minute or day-to-day time scale.

The climate is really a long-term average of the weather.

So, say we -- it's normally really, really sunny in the summertime where you are or normally really, really hot.

That would be the climate of your region, even though you might have warm days and cool days with regards to the weather.

And the climate is more like your personality.

So someone would say that you are normally a very happy person, you are normally a very outgoing person, even though sometimes you get sad, even though sometimes you want to stay in and do nothing, but, on the average, you are, you know, a happy person or outgoing person.

I think everyone should care about the climate because we're all part of the world.

We are all going to be exposed to these temperatures and to these changes in the atmosphere.

So it's important to know about and support to know why it's happening and what might be able to be done to make sure we stay safe with regards to climate change and things of that sort.

And that's what I like doing.

That's what my research is on.

But there's still a whole lot more that we have to answer.

If your passion is helping people, like mine is, and you're interested in the weather, this is a great career path to take and a great thing to study, because it combines both those things together.

>> Hi.

My name is Andy DeBrunner.

I'm the communications manager for Roundtop Mountain Resort here in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania.

It's Roundtop, Whitetail, Liberty, Jack Frost, Big Boulder in the Poconos are all our Pennsylvania resorts.

I grew up in this area, so Roundtop was my local mountain.

When I was a kid, I was kind of a speed demon.

That was my thrill.

I didn't take too many turns.

My dad always tells me about these stories when I refused to turn, I refused to stop.

Anytime I wanted to slow down, I'd just fall over and skid to a stop.

And one thing I love about it now, I'm a parent.

I have three children.

It's one of the few sports, too, that you can do kind of at any level with your family, which is one thing I absolutely love about it.

You really can't avoid the weather in any aspect of this job.

It's inextricably linked to what we do.

We rely heavily on manmade snow, so we have a whole team of snow-makers, and that's all really creating one's own weather system just right within one small area, which is amazing.

It's really cool.

Two big factors that we think about when we're making snow -- one is temperature, obviously, and the other is actually humidity.

So, the colder and the drier the temperatures and the humidity, the more so we can make.

So, we typically like to see 27 degrees and the humidity below 80%.

That means we can really get the guns going.

Mostly, snowmaking temperatures will exist overnight.

So, you know, while it might be 35 degrees during the day, it could drop to whatever overnight.

And when that happens, the snow-makers need to be ready.

I think the type of person who's attracted to this -- Like, a lot of people really love snow-making.

The people who do it really, really love it.

And it's because you get to have this perspective of the mountain that most people don't have.

They're the only person, basically, on the mountain.

You get to make snow, which is pretty cool, too, actually making your own weather, making something out of nothing.

Don't just turn the guns on and walk away.

This is why the snow-makers are so important.

It's not just a matter of, you know, flipping a switch and calling it a day.

They actually are blending the air and water in a lot of cases, setting the mixture to make the quality of snow that they want.

There really isn't a snow-making education program readily available to everybody, so the best way to learn is on the job.

And I think the best way to get on the job is to start -- just start talking.

You know, if you're interested in it, I think good things will happen.

>> There's no better way to learn about the weather than to observe it and experience it firsthand.

Did you know that you can keep track of how much it rains with a simple rain gauge made from a clear plastic bottle?

A rain gauge is an instrument used by meteorologists to measure precipitation like rain, snow, sleet, or hail.

Here's what you'll need -- a clear 2-liter bottle with the wrapper removed, a permanent marker, a ruler, and some small rocks.

With the help of a grown-up, cut the top section off a clear bottle like this.

Use a ruler to mark measuring increments, starting about 2 inches from the bottom.

Next, place several small rocks in the bottom for weight so it won't tip over.

Then fill the bottle with water to the zero mark.

This will calibrate your gauge.

Now turn the top of the bottle upside down and put it inside the rain gauge so it acts as a funnel.

Place the gauge on a flat surface outside and wait for the next time it rains.

Then observe and record how much rainfall you get inside your gauge.

You can even keep a journal over time to see how much rain you get weekly, monthly, or even yearly.

A hurricane is a type of tropical cyclone storm.

"Tropical" refers to the fact that these storms usually only form over tropical seas.

And a cyclone is a system of winds that rotate inward.

This kind of a storm is only called a hurricane when it is in the Atlantic Ocean or the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

They are very powerful storms that can cause lots of damage.

Hurricanes form when warm air from the sea or oceans rises and then is replaced by cooler air.

As this activity continues, large clouds and thunderstorms are created.

The storms combine together and begin to rotate in relation to the rotation of the earth.

The center of a hurricane is called the eye.

Most of the air in the hurricane flows outward, but some moves towards the center.

The air pressure here builds, forcing air downward and creating a usually circular area of calm weather at the center of the hurricane.

This is how the eye is formed.

When hurricanes travel over land, they lose access to the moist air over the ocean and begin to dry from the drier air over land.

Mountains can also slow them down.

Well, it's about time to wrap up.

We hope you had fun learning all about weather and climate.

From meeting people who track the effects of climate change and help forecast the weather for rocket launches to snow-makers and Ranger Bri, the environmental educator.

there are tons of careers out there if you love weather and nature.

We also learned about the different kinds of clouds, the layers of the atmosphere, and so much more.

How did your weather-vane, rain-gauge, and cloud experiments turn out?

We hope you had fun.

Join us again next time for another "Family Night" adventure soon.

>> Support for "Family Night: Weather & Climate" comes from the Pennsylvania Department of Education and viewers like you.

Thank you.