Mike Smith passes on Playing with Data‘s interesting map, which shows …

… the mean annual number of NOAA Storm Prediction Center Slight/Moderate/High Risks during the “Traditional School Year” as these products are valid for “days”. (Note: I define the “Traditional School Year” as being from 01 August – 31 May, inclusive. This means weekends and holidays are included.) It is much more difficult dealing with the watches as this is dependent upon things such as time zones, which makes preprocessing the data a bit more difficult. As such, this post addresses half ot the requests I had received: the NOAA Storm Prediction Center’s Severe Weather Outlooks per county during the “traditional” school year using data from 2000 through the end of 2012.

Below is the mean number of slight risk (or higher) outlooks for the traditional school year. As you can see, most areas east of the Rocky Mountains experience at least 1 slight risk (or higher) per school year. The maximum (nearly 37 days) is in southeast Oklahoma, and the centroid appearing to be in north-central Arkansas.

Below is the mean number of moderate risk (or higher) outlooks for the traditional school year. As you can see, once again, most areas east of the Rocky Mountains experience at least 1 moderate risk (or higher) per school year. The maximum (nearly 7 days) is located across much of Oklahoma, and the centroid appears to once again be located in the vicinity of Arkansas.

This affects Wisconsin more than you might think. May is the month when severe weather starts ramping up in Wisconsin, although there has been severe weather every month of the year except February. One activity during a May visit to Ripon of fifth-grade French students was showing off their host families’ basements. The only time a tornado warning took place during school was on a May day in fourth grade, when during a gym class softball game it occurred to me for the first time that when the sky darkens from the west, that’s not good. And earlier this year I had the career highlight of announcing a baseball playoff game during a tornado warning.

June, which is not depicted on this map, is Wisconsin’s most active tornado  month, but school doesn’t last long into June here. (On the other hand, the 1984 Barneveld tornado took place 36 hours before my brother’s high school graduation, which following graduation party was enlivened by a tornado warning. The F5 tornado that carved up Marinette and Oconto counties in June 2007 came after a day in which severe weather was sufficiently apocalyptically predicted to prompt one school district to call off classes early.)

The severe weather predicted this week is heat, not storms. (As of Monday, that is.) There have been rumblings, so to speak, about repealing the state law that requires that school start Sept. 1 or later. There have also been rumblings that school years should last longer, maybe all year.

Independent of whether those are good ideas educationally, no one I’ve noticed has addressed the issue of the expense of air-conditioning schools. (School started in Iowa Monday. The same day, school districts were calling off classes early due to the heat, and that appears to be the plan for nearly the entire week.) The severe weather that schools have to deal with the most is the white, wind-whipped kind that makes it difficult to get to school. Outside of the effects of severe weather on outdoor sporting events, I wonder how many school administrators have thought about contingency plans for school buildings damaged by severe thunderstorm winds, for instance, when classes are supposed to be held in those buildings the next day.