VIDEO: Hurricanes Produce A Teachable Moment

STARKVILLE, Miss.(WCBI)—The 3 hurricanes making their way toward the U.S. are continuing to raise concerns for residents here in the Southeast.

Professors in the Mississippi State Meteorology Department are looking to turn this potential catastrophic event into a teachable moment.

With hurricane Irma set to make landfall soon, and 3 other storms trailing close behind, it’s causing nation wide panic.

“It’s really unusual to have 3 tropical systems at the same time in one basin. Irma herself is a record breaking storm. Incredibly strong has maintained that intensity for a very long period of time,”said Mississippi State Meteorology Professor Mike Brown.

Brown says hurricanes, by design, take so much from any community in it’s path.

He says at least students can take away knowledge from the storm, to better protect the communities in the future.

“It is a really great learning moment when you have storms that are currently happening which is really great for the students to be able to see it. We can talk about it and we don’t have to go back in history and talk about storms that happened before because that really doesn’t hold their attention as well,”said Brown.

During the development of hurricanes advisories are released every 6 hours. Tropical storm expert Dr. Kimberly Wood says the advancement in technology is making this a much more valuable learning experiences.

“Satellite imagery, the new Go 16 Satellite is giving us higher resolution meaning we can see features better than we could be for. We are getting these pictures more often so it’s easier to tract the evolution of how the storms structure and size changing because we have more data. Then we use radar. Radar gives you sort of a snapshot in side the storm kind of like an Xray,” said Wood.

WCBI’s Jacob Dickey became a Meteorologist in 2015. He says students should seize the chance to learn all they can from this rare opportunity.

“This is a really great opportunity to sit down with professors and learn more about, not only the impacts of this storm but how people will react to that. Just having all these storms as well as advance technology has really making us have almost a unique learning experience during our time. This is something that happens maybe once when someone’s in college if that,”says Dickey.

Brown says a learning opportunity like this will make the students that much stronger in the workforce.

“This type of an experience is really invaluable when they can do something in real time like this. Tracking these storms looking at; how the storm is changing, how it’s evolving, how it’s a little bit different from our forecast models are predicting it to be, that’s all good learning environment for our students. So, when they get out into the real world and have to deal with these tropical storms, without the assistance of professors, they will have a lot more confidence in doing so,”said Brown.

According to projections Hurricane Irma is scheduled to make land fall Saturday morning.

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