Byng Public Schools is located five miles north of Ada in East Central Oklahoma. We have had the privilege to use the Oklahoma Mesonet since 1994. In the years that have followed, Byng has seen an increase in weather awareness that has reached from the elementary to the high school. Every day a student reads a weather forecast for the day on the intercom that is taken from the Mesonet system.
Students have shown interest not only in hearing the weather but experimenting and doing research with weather data. One team and two individual science fair projects won top honors at local and regional science fairs. These teams will discuss with those present how they used the Mesonet to gather viable scientific data to complete their projects and how mentors made critical suggestions that helped the students improve their project for the next level of competition.
The students' projects are: "Temperature Forecast Study" (determining and comparing the accuracy of forecasted high and low temperatures for one to four days from the forecasted dates), "How Do Solar Radiation and Temperatures Differ at Five Mesonet Sites in Oklahoma?" and, "Tornadoes" (determining the weather conditions prior to tornado formation across Oklahoma).