Letter to the Editor: Local Weatherman Visits Roderick School

Wrentham Patch received the following letter from the Wrentham Elementary School Trust (WEST):

Recently, fourth grade students at the Roderick School got a first hand introduction to the field of meteorology by a veteran New England forecaster. Barry Burbank, meteorologist with Boston’s WBZ-TV, visited Wrentham students to discuss weather phenomena and formulating weather predictions, quizzed the students on US geography, and fielded questions from the eager students.  

Mr. Burbank also shared a movie created by the entire meteorology team at Channel 4, which humorously addressed a day in the life of a meteorologist, demonstrated scientific weather experiments, and introduced students to TV weather production and working in front of the green screen.  The students really enjoyed hearing about his daily activities and finding out about a career in front of the TV cameras.

Barry Burbank has been a weatherman at WBZ TV for 30 years, and he shared some personal stories of how he became interested in weather.   Asked how and when he first knew he wanted to be a meteorologist, he said, “I knew in fourth grade.”  As a kid growing up in New England, he was filled with curiosity about why the weather was always changing.  He really wanted the answers.

Mr. Burbank also shared a cautionary story from his childhood days in southern Maine. One afternoon, a 12” snowstorm had been predicted by the local weatherman, “and I decided I was not going to do my homework.” Fully believing that a foot of snow would fall and result in a school cancellation, he told his mom not to worry about his homework and enjoyed his night off. Periodically through the night, he woke to check on the progress of the snowstorm. “The brightness of the moon woke me up at midnight.  I jumped out of bed and became a little alarmed that the full moon was up in the sky and the stars were out.”  Still confident that the weatherman had been correct, he went back to sleep until just before dawn, when he looked out his bedroom window and saw the sun beginning to rise on the eastern horizon and still not a flake had fallen.  “I was flabbergasted that the lawn was still bare. “ It turned out that the big snowstorm had missed his town by only 10 miles.  His advice to students, after more than three decades in the business of predicting the weather: “Always do your homework, no matter what the weatherman says!”

This weatherman visit was arranged by 4th grade teacher Tracy Phipps and the Wrentham Elementary Schools Trust (WEST) and is part of the expansion of the 4th grade science curriculum on Weather.  Last year with the help of generous donation from Wrentham Co-operative Bank, WEST installed a Weatherbug weather tracking system on the roof of the Roderick School.   Fourth Grade teachers are currently expanding their weather curriculum to include student interpretation and experimentation with live feed data from the WeatherBug System.

WEST is a non-profit organization that provides monetary grants to Wrentham Elementary School teachers for innovative curriculum enrichment programs. To find out more about WEST and to access the Roderick WeatherBug weather station from your home computer please visit our website at www.WrenthamWEST.org.