Steve Runnels from National Weather Service, Springfield, MO

Here are some facts that we learned from Steve Runnels from the NWS.

J.L.

 

-75% of the time the National Weather Service issues a Watch when conditions are right for a tornado but no tornado forms.

-In a super cell the up draft is the storm tower and the down draft is the rain.

-Even when a tornado is on the ground, its exact path is unpredictable. Therefore NWS is never sure who is going to be hit.

-the NWS issues tornado warnings in polygons of the most likely affected areas. This is more specific than the previous entire county warnings.

-Impact Base Warning system created to include

1. Why is warning/watch being issued.

2. What is the confidence level of their prediction? 

3. What is the impact of the storm.

-The barometer drops suddenly as a tornado passes. This means that the pressure inside a tornado is much lower than outside of the tornado. But the pressure just a short distance away does not change much.

How did we come up with our robot

How did we come up with our robot?

1st-- We decided what missions we were going to do and how to do those missions, and that told us what the robot needed to have to do those missions. So then everybody went home and built a robot
that would work for the missions that we were going to do. After each of us had built a robot we looked over them all and talked about what was good and bad about each of them. That allowed us to combine all of these robots which gave us a great robot.

2nd-- We took that robot and built a 3D model of it in LDD (Lego Digital Designer). 
Then we could share instructions so it would be a lot easier to build duplicates of it.

Here are the instructions for our robot Rolla Regional Robotics Green Team Robot Building Instructions

Team Name

Every body with an idea pick 1team name you thought of.  And then we will say which one(s) we like the best

Project Meeting Update Nov 7

Hello Green Team,

     Good job everyone at participating and contributing to today's meeting at the library! 

      First of all, Mr. Steve Runnels with the National Weather Service, will be meeting with us at the robotics lab next Wednesday the 13th at 2:00.  We put together a list of questions to email him.

      I mentioned core values, but then had trouble remembering very many of them.  Here they are:

~ We are a team.

~ We do the work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors.

~ We know our coaches and mentors do not have all the answers; we learn together. (So true on my part!!)

~ We honor the spirit of friendly competition.

~ What we discover is more important than what we win.

~ We share our experiences with others.

~ We display Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition in everything we do.

~ We have fun!

Also, if you haven't looked at the judging rubrix recently, here is a link for it:

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/sites/default/files/Official_Event_Info/CombinedRubrics.pdf

Here is what we accomplished today:

We assigned team members to write up descriptions of our meetings with various professionals and post it on our blog. 

Brooke - Intercounty Electric

Luke - Lt. Rick Williams, City of Rolla Emergency Supervisor (that may not be the correct title)

J.L. - Mr. Steve Runnels, National Weather Service

Katie - KRCG weather station field trip.

Additional posts from Ryan about selecting our team name, and Nathaneal explaining how we developed our team's robot.

Brooke - organize tri-fold poster board

Ryan - Flyer to pass out with team info, tornado safety tips, and grab and go bag info.

Everyone - keep thinking about a team name, possibly a candy (lollypop?) to incorporate..

Presentation - 

Nathaneal - Introduction

Salesman - J.L.

Scientist - Brooke

Pig #1 - Ryan - no precautions

Pig #2 - Luke - relies on cell phone app, should he make it or not?

Pig #3 - Katie - prepared,  practices tornado drills, grab and go bag, etc.

Wolf / Tornado - David

We weren't sure if McKenzie will still be with us, so can still include her if so.

Instead of having just one person write the script, we thought we would have each person write a possible script for their character, and then mesh them together.   Bring this to the lab on Monday and we will take about half an hour to discuss it.

Items to find - labcoat, pig ears, tail? wolf / tornado costume

Think about house structure...

See you Monday!

Mrs. Williams

     This is a link to a website I found about TOTO.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/meteorological-instruments/totable-tornado-observatory3.htm

Below is a link to information about the number of tornados near Rolla with a chart of frequency and number of deaths and injuries.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArrVIKfXU9TndEl5UE5vN1JIc1hUVkF6T0FMM1dCOFE&usp=sharing

Information gathered from www.homefacts.com
(Contributed by John Lewis Koenig)

This link is a blog from the Rolla Police Chief relating to the Rolla area tornado from December 31, 2010.
http://rollacity.blogspot.com/2011/01/police-chief-chat.html

This is a web site from the city of Rolla about their procedure for setting off sirens. It also has information about tornadoes.
http://www.rollacity.org/emergency/emergency.pdf

This web site is from NOAA and is about using cell phones to warn people about tornadoes.
 http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/wea.html#.UlLG0RrnaJl

David