What do you do when you are bored witless and want to grow some more brain cells? Just when you think there is nothing left to do on summer vacation, here are a few weather related crafts and experiments.On
top of my list is time-lapse photography. Set up a camcorder on a tripod, point it at a hill or butte, and flip time-lapse switch. Time-lapse cloud photography is fun to watch. You will see clouds try to develop and dissipate, some seemingly standing still while others whip on past. High clouds and low clouds may move in different directions, too.
While camcorder is running - preferably for several hours - you can study wildflowers, birds, assorted varmints, or just relax. However, it is a good idea to pack up and leave if a thunderstorm heads your way.
In second place on time consuming projects is making of an anemometer, a device used to measure wind speed. One style I worked on as a kid and never perfected used a bicycle wheel with a bunch of one or two-ounce cups attached to it. The cups have to be evenly spaced to that wheel is balanced. All of cups need to face same direction and one should be distinctive so that you can count number of revolutions it makes.
The number of revolutions wheel makes varies according to wind speed, so second step in this project is to find out how many times wheel goes around at a given speed. The easy way to do this is to take a bicycle with same diameter wheel and a speedometer. Spin wheel until speedometer reaches 10 m.ph. and count how many times it goes around in one minute. Do same thing for 15 m.p.h. and 20 m.p.h.
