Leslie Norton, age 7, of Sarasota, Florida, for her question:

How do they tell what the weather will be like?

Maybe you think that the weatherman just guesses what tomorrow's weather is likely to be. Not at all. Teams of experts work behind the scenes to find these answers. For one thing, the weather always comes from some place. Tomorrow's weather for Flor¬ida may be on its way from Texas or perhaps from out in the ocean. Weather satellites, stations, ships and planes send all this information to central weather headquarters.  Weather satellites are particularly helpful with the photographs from space, that allows the weather man to observes large weather systems as they evolve.

There the experts mark all these far flung weather reports on a map. Sometimes they see a hurricane heading your way. They can tell when to expect it from which way and how fast it is moving. Or, perhaps the far flung reports show that a spell of nice sunny weather is traveling your way and is expected to arrive later in the day. This is called weather forecasting    and hundreds of people work behind the scenes to gather the information.