HIGH SCHOOL WEATHER STATION UPLOADS DATA TO NWS

By Geoff Robb, High School Science teacher

The science department of the High School has owned a weather station since 2000. This station is now sending its weather observations every ten minutes to the National Weather Service (NWS) and to the Weather Underground.

The High School is now part of the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP), which collects data from more than 3000 personal weather stations and passes it on to the NWS to be used for updating current conditions and input into forecast models. We are currently the only CWOP site in the Ann Arbor area to participate. Our station ID is CW4874 and our data can be viewed here. Additional information on CWOP can be found here.

We are also uploading to the Weather Underground network of personal weather stations. Our weather data can be found at Weather_Underground on the Ann Arbor forecast page. Scroll down to the end of the forecast until you find the personal weather stations. We are usually second on the list.

The weather station has proven to be a very useful tool for teaching the Meteorology main lesson block in grade 10. It gives us barometric pressure, temperature, dew point, indoor/outdoor humidity and rainfall data which is updated every 2 seconds and archived every half hour, so we now have a database of five years of weather history for this area.

By observing how these values change on a daily basis, students can see how they relate to the actual conditions outside, and how they are related to one another. We are also able to correlate how our data fits in with the national weather data, and begin to make attempts to forecast the future weather. Having access to so much data and the software to display it conveniently has proven to be a very effective teaching tool, and our students gain a solid understanding of meteorological data presentations, particularly barometric pressure contour maps with fronts.

Questions or comments please call Geoff Robb at the High School or by email.