Reagan Math and Science Night
November 6, 2025 SoMO attended Reagan Elementary’s Math and Science night providing demonstrations for elementary school students and their families. Kids were mesmerized by the hail dryer experiment, seeing how updrafts help create and sustain hail while also learning what causes hail to fall. SCAN’s weather friend Swirl Girl helped out with tornado in a bottle experiments. Students got to learn how tornadoes form while watching vortexes get created in the bottles.
Women In STEAM
November 5, 2025 SoMO attended the Women in STEAM Conference at the Science Museum Oklahoma, providing demonstrations for middle and high school students interested in STEAM subjects. Visitors saw cans being crushed by phase changes combined with air pressure, and various atmospheric soundings showing characteristics of different weather patterns.
National Weather Festival
November 1, 2025
About 300 people visited SoMO’s demonstrations at the National Weather Festival! This was SoMO’s fourth time at the NWF. We hosted live rotating tank, cloud in a bottle, and tornado in a bottle demonstrations. Visitors could also create their own wind vane that they could take home with them. Weather safety bingo was hosted that provided information on what items are recommended to be prepared for severe weather.
Community Christian School Visit
September 20, 2025
SoMO welcomed an AP English class from Community Christian School to the National Weather Center. The class was reading Isaac’s Storm and wanted to learn more about the science behind hurricanes. SoMO performed a demonstration and lecture for the class, and helped the class arrange tours of the NWC and ARRC. In the demonstration, we showed the importance of the Coriolis effect using a rotating tank. The lecture then built on this demonstration by exploring the other factors necessary for hurricane formation, explaining the structure of hurricanes, and discussing the impacts hurricanes can have on both coastal and inland communities. We concluded the lecture with a section on hurricane forecasting, including the challenges of forecasting in a warming climate and, despite these challenges, showing how much hurricane forecasts have improved over the last 20 years.
Southwest OKC Library Event
August 5, 2025
SoMO visited the Southwest OKC Public Library, holding tables to engage with children of all ages and their parents. Many demonstrations were held, including on severe weather, severe weather safety, learning about pressure with a can crushing experiment, and the cloud-in-a-bottle experiment to conceptualize the water cycle. Attendees particularly enjoyed building their own cup anemometers and testing them out in the wind!
OU Horizons Engineering Week
July 14 – 18th, 2025
SoMO gave a weeklong series of lectures and demonstrations to middle schoolers at a summer camp. Topics included the vertical structure of the atmosphere, pressure, temperature, fronts, precipitation, and severe weather. Demonstrations included can crushing and a rotating tank demonstration. Students also got to learn about the radar trucks at OU. Throughout the week, students contoured different atmospheric variables such as temperature and pressure on weather maps to make predictions on a severe weather case.
Truman Primary School Visit
May 19, 2025
SoMO visited with the first graders at Truman Primary School in Norman, Oklahoma. Students were guided through four interactive stations that taught Severe Weather, Severe Weather Safety, Water Cycle, and Earth, Sun and Seasons.
Reagan Elementary School Visit
April 24, 2025
SoMO visited Reagan Elementary School to help with their reading night. This even was water cycle-themed, with a cloud in a bottle demonstration and water cycle coloring sheets.
Wilson Elementary School Visit
April 4, 2025
SoMO visited the First Graders at Wilson Elementary School in Norman, Oklahoma. Students were guided through four stations to explore meteorology topics with hands-on activities. The four stations covered Severe Weather, Severe Weather Safety, Water Cycle, and Earth, Sun and Seasons. Activities at these stations included dropping hailstones to determine the magnitude of their impacts and spinning a tornado in a bottle.
National Weather Festival
October 26, 2024
SoMO participated in the National Weather Festival at the National Weather Center in Norman, OK for the third year in a row. We had over 300 visitors. Demonstrations included can crushing using atmospheric pressure and fluid flow in a rotating tank. Visitors could also spin a tornado in a bottle and make a rainbow out of contact paper and tissue paper.
Women in STEAM Visit
October 8, 2024
SoMO participated in the women in STEAM event at the Science Museum of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. This event allows middle and high school students to learn about careers in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. Students could learn about careers in meteorology and make hailstones out of Play-Doh.
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Earth Educators Rendezvous
July 15-19, 2024
SoMO presented a poster about our organization and learned about educational strategies at other institutions.
Truman Primary School Visit
May 16, 2024
SoMO visited with the First Graders at Truman Primary School in Norman, Oklahoma. The visit was tailored similarly to the February 2024 visit at Wilson Elementary School, where students were guided through four stations focused on Severe Weather, Severe Weather Safety, Weather Measurements, and Earth, Sun and Seasons.
Second Wilson Elementary School Visit
April 5, 2024
SoMO was invited to a return visit with the First Graders at Wilson Elementary School in Norman, Oklahoma. Students were guided through four activities, two related to Moon phases and two related to eclipses. For eclipses, students were able to create pinhole viewers that they could use to view the eclipse the following week.
First Wilson Elementary School Visit
February 23, 2024
SoMO was invited to visit with the First Graders at Wilson Elementary School in Norman, Oklahoma. Students were guided through four stations to explore meteorology topics with hands-on activities. The four stations covered Severe Weather, Severe Weather Safety, Weather measurements, and Earth, Sun and Seasons.
“I know there are lots of future meteorologists thanks to your visit!“
National Weather Festival
October 29, 2023
SoMO participated at the National Weather Festival where we demonstrated fun experiments and hands-on activities for all ages!
We handed out weather safety coloring worksheets, encouraged kids to make their own DIY cup anemometer that measures wind speed, demonstrated how hail forms and grows, walked kids through a fun coding activity, showcased a tornado in a bottle, and had a dry ice tornado demonstration.
Women in Science Conference
October 4, 2023
In collaboration with OU SCAN, SoMO participated in the NSF EPSCoR sponsored Women in Science Conference. This conference was for middle and high school girls and their teachers.
Our team developed a hands-on activity that illustrated how weather balloon observations look and how meteorologists use them to determine different types of weather.
It also encouraged girls that that coding is not intimidating and can actually be fun!
Upward Bound
July 6, 2023
We worked with A&GS to host an afternoon for Upward Bound students. This included a Q&A panel on careers in meteorology, weather trivia, and rotating tank demonstrations!
OU HSC Safety Fair
April 6, 2023
We participated in the OU Health Science Center Safety Fair, passing out NWS Severe Weather Safety Sheets to college students to inform them of the precautions to take in case watches or warnings are placed.
Kennedy Elementary Visit
March 6, 2023
SoMO and OU SCAN Weather Friends made a visit to Kennedy Elementary in the Norman Public School system to teach third graders about weather safety. We prepared a 30-minute demonstration for all four third grade classes at Kennedy Elementary. We tailored the courses to be focused on weather safety to help prepare kids for severe weather season.
The Weather Friends brought trading cards that taught kids about various weather phenomenas, which really excited the kids!
National Weather Festival
Fall 2022
This was SoMO’s first year participating in NWS! We featured a variety of activities for all ages, including coloring sheets, a DIY cup anemometer craft, tornado in a bottle, dry ice tornado models, hail impact pads, and a radiosonde coding activity.
OU Mini College
July 25-29, 2022
SoMO participated in Mini College, a program organized by the OU College of Professional and Continuing Studies that immerses students in hands-on educational activities.
We taught three classes a day for 1st-2nd, 3rd-4th, and 5th-6th graders, covering topics such as cloud formation, severe weather, weather safety, and careers in meteorology.
Through collaboration with the ARRC and CIWRO, we were able to show a mobile radar and a mobile Mesonet truck!
