Favorable forecast

     By Ray Parker
     View staff writer
      Professor Barbara Graham tells her students to look no further than a fountain drink to understand cloud formations.
      Understanding such climate concepts as high and low pressure, barometer readings and dew point can be difficult, so Graham tries to explain such ideas on an everyday level at the Community College of Southern Nevada.
      She tells her students to observe a fountain drink on a hot summer day as the water drips from the edges of the plastic container -- as the air molecules cool around the drink, they change from a gas to a liquid state, or dew point.
      "I'm talking about stuff you can't really see, such as gas molecules," said the physical geography instructor who teaches meteorology.
      But they're a practical-minded lot at CCSN, and Graham jumped at the chance to spend a week at the National Weather Service, looking over meteorologists' shoulders.
      "I wanted to make my course less academic and more relevant to the workplace," said Graham who teaches Geography 122, introduction of meteorology.
      She and a dozen other CCSN professors are updating their classes after leaving the world of academia and entering the business world.
      Graham spent 50 hours this summer at the National Weather Service -- 7851 Industrial Road -- observing how meteorologists crunch weather data to come up with a forecast. The Las Vegas office is one of 160 NWS sites in the continental U. S., compiling weather data 24 hours a day.
      "They're creating a forecast based on models that are done in Washington D.C.; you've got these think-tank people in D.C. who are looking at the satellite imaging of the world," Graham said. "They come out with a `discussion,' they call it, for each region. That gets shipped out to the weather stations and they come out with a local forecast."
      She hopes her experience will enable her to create meteorology courses that prepare students to go on to a four-year university. She's already hooked up two portable weather stations so students can take readings and come up with their own "discussions."
      Linda Foreman, the School to Careers program director, said every professor had to come back with specific changes in their classes as a result of their experiences.
      "Our students are anywhere from 18 to 80," Foreman said. "A lot are looking to the community college to provide specific career advancement, and that's what we hope this program will accomplish."