Weather Tips for Teachers or Weather Geeks like me

As the technology teacher at school, (believe it or not) I get many questions about the weather (as if I know something about it!)  I always say:  "a meteorlogist is one of the only jobs where you can say you don't have any idea what's going to happen yet it that is your job!" 

Anyway,  the following are a few good weather links for helping decipher the craziness of winter weather.  In fact, just recently an encore teacher called wanting to know the weather for the next day since the next day's weather would determine how she writes today's lesson plan...

On the National Weather Service Site for Winston-Salem, there is a link under "additional forecasts and information" that says forecast discussion.

If you can "cut through" the technical jargon, you can get a really good idea of what the meteorologists think it will do.  Many times the official forecasts are "trimmed back" for general public consumption.  On the forecast discussion page, they give you hints of what really might happen!

Then of course, there are a myriad of school closing pages.
WXII posts the local winston closings fairly quickly. 
Also as a twitter member, I have been impressed with the quick notification I have received from following wsfcs on twitter.  I get the twitter update of school closings sometimes even before the Alert now phone call!

Finally, there are several other good weather resource sites for our area:

Winston-Salem 15 day forecast from Accu Weather


Regional Weather By County from NOAA


Mountain Weather for Boone and the High Country/Ray's Weather


Winston-Salem Traffic Cameras

http://www.history.noaa.gov/nwstech_tales.html

If you are on Facebook,  try making friends with Frank Strait (Accu Weather) and Grant Gilmore (meteorologist on the local CBS affiliate in GSO)

Frank Strait also has a really good blog where he posts a daily video on his personalized forecast for the South East including what he really thinks will happen with storms :)

Enjoy :)