Building a Weather-Ready Nation Through Adult English Language Literacy in Fairbanks, Alaska

The National Weather Service aspires to produce broadly available, accessible, and useful weather forecast information, and requires effective methods to reach a significant population of non-English speaking residents in the United States, a country with no official language. In the NWS’s farthest north forecasting region, the long, cold, dark high latitude winters present significant challenges for non-English speaking newcomers, the majority of whom are unfamiliar with winter weather, winter-related hazards, and local geography. The intersection of weather preparedness and English literacy provides a unique opportunity to help build the NWS’s Weather Ready Nation in Fairbanks, Alaska, and to improve communication and relationships with immigrant communities across the United States. In partnership with the NWS Fairbanks Weather Forecasting Office and Literacy Council of Alaska, members of the Farthest North Chapter of the American Meteorological Society identified a potentially effective way to increase weather preparedness and literacy for adult English language learners.

A beginning level English language course is designed to equip adult learners with vocabulary, grammar, and knowledge related to winter weather in Fairbanks, Alaska. Eight sessions are taught in the weeks leading up to winter solstice 2023, which provides opportunities for students to become familiar with concepts as the season approaches, such as: basic weather terminology, weather information resources, local winter activities, winter weather hazards, and dressing for the winter. The local Fairbanks community provides ample support for the course, including a dedicated AmbientWeather station and teaching assistance from our local AMS chapter, and guest speakers like Dr. Nicole Molders who is the founding chair of the University of Alaska Fairbanks atmospheric sciences department and local high latitude fashion blogger. The shared experience of living through winter in Fairbanks contributes to a strong sense of community, and unlike generic English language instruction materials, community input grounds the course in local seasonal life to help learners thrive rather than merely survive, as well as increase the relevance of local English language education.

An evaluation of the pilot course will help us work toward our goals of developing a sustainable, accessible, and relevant English language course to build a weather ready community, and one that can be used as a model for other non-profit English literacy programs in partnership with local NWS WFOs and/or AMS chapters. Beyond regular English language evaluation conducted by LCA, our group will establish evaluation metrics to help us better understand effective ways of communicating and teaching concepts regarding weather-related health and safety to English learners. We will present lessons learned and what we seek to change or accomplish in the next iterations of the course. A conceptualized future sister course might be geared towards higher-level English learners who can engage with more complex concepts like climate change and emergency weather management. Multiple English language learners have revealed strong technical backgrounds (computer programming, engineering, etc.); a course like this may provide an avenue for future workforce development at partner WFOs for such individuals as their English language proficiency increases. While our major goals might increase weather preparedness and literacy in the English language, we posit that working with literacy programs and diverse global communities locally helps expand cross cultural communication skills within the scientific and weather forecasting community, leading to more accessible weather forecast information for everyone.