Foul-Weather Fun

It is one of those days when I need a little divine intervention. Two playdates have fallen through, and Julia, 9, and Henry, 7, are over-tired and getting on each other's nerves.

"It's going to be a long afternoon," I complain to Dave on the phone, as I listen to the bickering coming from the next room.

"I'll get home as early as I can," he promises.

Looking out the window, I see a sky covered with rain clouds — but instead of the usual disappointment, I am thrilled.

"A nimbus!" I yell to the kids. After reading about weather in THE DARING BOOK FOR GIRLS by Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, we've become interested in weather. We've been hunting for all kinds of clouds: cumulus, stratus, cirrus, and particularly nimbus — because that's the name of one of Harry Potter's brooms.

As the kids gather at the window, I ask them if they want to make our very own cloud, and of course they do. We visit www.stevespanglerscience.com, the popular science experiment web site, and get directions for creating our own cloud in a clear plastic soda bottle. After a few tries, our little cloud appears.

"That looks like a cumulus to me, Mom," observes Henry.

As the rain begins to fall outside, our own little storm center is coming together and we decide to create some hurricanes. Having heard about hurricanes this fall, the kids have been peppering Dave and I with questions we've been at a loss to answer, such as, "What exactly is a hurricane?"

"Can we really make our own hurricanes?" asks Julia, my 9-year-old skeptic.

"Yes — and they'll be red!" I reply. We use the directions from the same web site — the hurricane recipe calls for two empty soda bottles, water, and some colored lamp oil (available at department stores), which I happen to have on hand for a holiday oil lamp.

We twist and turn our soda bottles full of water and red lamp oil to create our red hurricanes, while talking about how this phenomenon happens in the real sky.

When Dave arrives home from work, we give him an encore performance.

"It looks like you made it through this rainy day with flying colors," he remarks.

Thank goodness for a little foul weather.