UNI creates a storm with its new center

There’s a “storm” at the University of Northern Iowa. A refurbished classroom filled with high-tech software has been dubbed “storm,” the Science center for Teaching, Outreach and Research for Meteorology.Students work with the same kind of images and data “products” real forecasters use in predicting weather. Associate professor of meteorology Alan Czarnetzki says despite decades of jokes, TV weather people get some very good training to make their predictions accurate. And it’s not just a public-relations ploy, says Czarnetzki, to brag about the radar.He thinks the “doppler” radar’s the best tool in ten years for spotting bad weather. UNI has a weather website anyone can visit, and Czarnetzki says it has more than just statistics. He says they have links to all the weather products that are available via the Internet and they have a discussion about the weather on a particular day.The website’s free for anyone, at “www.earth.uni.edu”.