Students frequently struggle when scientific instruction seems divorced from personal experience, especially in the physical sub-disciplines, like climatology, where exercise books often present historical or abstracted case studies. In contrast I present a three-phase project involving student input on experimental design, data collection, and analysis for the measurement of thermal variation in valley environments. Using the topical concepts of thermal variation related to cold air drainage, thermal belts, and the urban heat island proved a useful pedagogical tool for integrating the theory and praxis of research design, data standardization, and data analysis.