Few know about weather more than meteorologist Clay Smith, but he was still late by 30 minutes after a foggy morning drive from Chattanooga, Tenn., to Peachtree Elementary School on Oct. 8.
Smith, a weather forecaster for WRCB Local 3 News, the NBC television affiliate in Chattanooga, was at Peachtree Elementary to teach Monica Harrison’s fourth-graders about the weather. He said the two-hour-plus drive is the longest he has traveled for a classroom speaking engagement.
Harrison’s classrooms aren’t ordinary. She’s a Cherokee County Teacher of the Year alumna teaching at a school that is regularly among the highest-performing ones in the county.
Having professionals speak to her classroom isn’t unusual. Pupils at Peachtree Elementary expect to learn about the world around them, but in 2023 the entire student body had a chance to fix their gaze on something infinitely larger – the universe.
A mobile planetarium from the Morehead Planetarium & Science Center at UNC Chapel Hill was at the school for three days, thanks to a $1,300 grant that Harrison obtained.
Harrison is a hands-on teacher who has been known to build raised planting beds to teach her students about agriculture, for example.
Smith has worked for the Local 3 Weather Storm Alert team off and on since 2023. His most memorable moment was coverage of Hurricane Laura in Greenville, Miss., in 2020.
At Peachtree Elementary, weather is important. The EF-1 tornado that hit the area during the tornado outbreak of May 6-9, 2024, is still fresh on many’s minds. It destroyed one home and caused major damage to seven others.
Smith started with the basics – using a PowerPoint slideshow to describe the various instruments that track and predict the weather – a thermometer to measure temperature, for example.
As he ended that introduction, one student raised her hand and asked, “What about a rain gauge?” Smith pondered for a moment, then said he should probably add that to his slide show.