The Herald Times newspaper, April 17 1984: "March 24 proved to
be an exciting day for several area students participating in the
South Central Indiana Regional Science Fair which was held in
Bloomington.
Lisa Link, an Edgewood High School junior, and Maxwell Brothers, a
Bloomington North senior, took top honors in the advanced
division.
Programming an Atari 800 computer to forecast the weather was
Link's project. The computer's entire 48K memory system was needed
to develop the long and complicated program which predicts
Bloomington's weather with an 88 percent rate of accuracy. Twelve
variables are programmed into the computer which then forecasts the
weather using such variables including temperature, cloud cover,
rainfall, wind speed and barometric pressure.
Link, though not presently enrolled in any science classes at
Edgewood, went on to take not only top honors in the Regional
Science Fair but also to win certificates of recognition from NASA
and the Army as well as second place for best project by the
Navy."
An article a month later in The Newark Advocate said: "during a
17-day period in February and March, Miss Link said she accurately
forecast the weather on 15 days."
Her project garnered several awards: second place in her division
from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (which included a
prize of $100), an Air Force honorable mention, and honorable
mention from the American Meteorological Society.
My interview with Lisa Link Melville took place on May 31 2026.
Video version of this interview:
https://youtu.be/nqJV_--YVkM