June 28, 2022 – USA: The third Weekly Challenge of the Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally focused on the weather. The Weather Awareness Challenge included an assessment of teams’ abilities to “read” the clouds and interpret the current weather patterns to predict short-term changes that might cause dangerous conditions while traveling or recreating outdoors.
In addition to demonstrating an understanding of the signs that might indicate problematic weather, teams had to show that they were aware of the basic safety precautions to take in various situations including severe thunderstorms and flash floods. The competitors were also quizzed on their reactions to specific weather scenarios with the goal of increasing everyone’s awareness to any potentially dangerous weather while they are out on the trails.
The Weekly Challenges are one of the four pillars of the Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally and competitors can earn up to 100 points each week for completing the Challenge questions online. The Challenges also provide a way for all the teams to stay engaged over the whole ten weeks, even when they are not out exploring on Overland Stages. Each Week’s Challenge focuses on a different aspect of overland travel or outdoor skills — sometimes the competitors will have to do something offline in order to answer the questions and other times they just need to respond to multiple choice knowledge-checks. The teams are always free to research answers or find tutorials to help them complete the tasks prior to submitting their Challenges and once each Challenge “closes” they can consult the “correct” answers and explanations — turning it into a defacto learning opportunity.