In Headlines and High Water, players take on the role of a young journalist in the fictional town of Twin Lakes, where the annual Cherry Festival is thrown into chaos by a catastrophic flood. The player is tasked with interviewing locals and writing stories to keep the town informed—all while staying safe during the town’s worst flood of the century.

Throughout the game, players build trust with the townspeople and interview a cast of quirky characters—like Birdie, the aptly-named nature conservationist, and Fred Finkler, the gardener who’ll talk your ear off. In the end, the player’s reporting will determine if Twin Lakes is still around a year from now, or if future floods wash the town right off the map.

Can you adjust the atmosphere to make a thunderstorm?
Thunderstorms can only happen under certain conditions.
What do temperature and humidity need to be like up high and near tothe ground to make a storm?

This curriculum guide contains pacing, instruction, and assessment guidance to accompany the OpenSciEd unit 7.6 Earth Resources & Human Impact. For schools who use Fisher and Frey's The Teacher Clarity Playbook, you'll find student-friendly learning intentions and success criteria for every lesson, drawn from the OSE three dimensional performance expectations. These can be posted on slides or boards in classrooms to make learning visible for students and help design assessment criteria.  

Students will use their engineering skills to develop a rain gauge and a discussion about getting precise precipitation measurements.

The winter severity index (WSI) is a measurement to help gauge the effects of the winter weather on
deer survival. The index was developed in the early 1970’s and is calculated by adding the number of
days with 18 inches or more of snow on the ground to the number of days when the minimum
temperatures were 0◦
F or below. In general, the severity of the winter is based on the total number of
points accumulated over the collection period. A winter with an index of less than 50 is considered mild,
50 to 79 is moderate, 80 to 99 is severe, and over 100 is very severe.