We’re working on new 30 year Normals, Means and Extremes

2011-11-26 19:00:27.000 – Roger Pushor,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist

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Over the past few days I’ve been working with Ryan Knapp who’s our Meteorologist on my shift to get the 30 Year Normals, Means and Extremes page updated with 1981 to 2010 data which we’re currently targeting to have completed by the first of January. For any of you who know me you know I love to work with numbers so I’m in heaven right now.

For those Members who’ve had the opportunity to tour the Observatory you’ve probably heard that we go out once an hour of every day to take an observation. Until I started working on this project I never really thought about the amount of data we’re collecting so I’m going to throw out a few numbers. That’s twenty four trips up to the Observation deck each day to read the thermometers and ‘sling’ if we’re not in the fog. That’s an average of 720 observations a month or 8760 observations a year. Then I pulled the temperature and wind data for the last 30 years – That by the way is how long the Observatory has occupied the Sherman Adams building here on the Summit – My query came back in just a few seconds with nearly 263,000 observations – Can this be right – Well a little quick math verified that we have taken, checked and verified over a quarter of a million observations in the past 30 years – That’s nearly three quarters of a million observation in our almost 80 year history.

More recently we’ve been collecting Temperature, Wind and Barometric Pressure data once a minute with an automated system – That however hasn’t taken the human Observer out of the picture – They’re still making the trek up the stairs to the Observation Deck once an hour to take an observation and then record it and submit it to the National Weather Service.

Roger Pushor,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist