The sky becomes black in the distance. It starts to swirl as you hear a loud crackle above. Light flashes all around you, but you don’t understand. For Mrs. Tammye York’s Second grade class, it wouldn’t be long before they learned.

WFAA Channel 8 Weatherman Greg Fields stopped by the class as part of their WeatherMinds program and discussed various weather formations with the curious students.

Mr. Fields came to Mrs. York’s class to teach the youth about the wonders of weather. Since Texas is near Tornado Alley, he taught the class about the formation of tornadoes when warm, moist air meets cool, dry air. Additionally, due to the fact that Texas forms part of the Gulf of Mexico, he discussed hurricanes as well.

In the lesson, Mr. Fields focused primarily on tornadoes and hurricanes but also mentioned various cloud formations. Second grade student Mikhail Skariah said, “He talked about what his favorite types of clouds and weather were, how he got into it and what drove him to be a weatherman.”

Coming into the presentation, Mikhail said, “I knew safety rules already and that hail and snow were frozen rain drops. When I was little my dad used to tell me about how tornadoes are made and how cold and hot air mixes together.”

The WeatherMinds program, sponsored by WFAA, sends members of their weather team to local schools to encourage student interest in the weather. Mrs. York said, “Greg Fields’ WeatherMinds visit made us ‘mindful’ of weather and showed that how we respond to weather can affect us.”

The meteorologist’s visit may have even inspired some of the children to pursue a career in that field. Makayla Forde said, “My friend wants to be a weathergirl now because she thought the tornadoes were cool.”