Dear Member,
I’m writing to you at an exciting time with news about our work in education and research.
New Educational Programs
Our staff has been hard at work preparing a full suite of school day, afterschool, virtual, and field trip programs. The program launch kicks off with a backpack giveaway, providing free Cotopaxi backpacks with home weather stations, NWS cloud charts, and weather safety materials to hundreds of middle school students across northern New Hampshire and western Maine (see photo below).
Our education team is highly motivated to break down financial barriers and make Mount Washington more accessible to young students. Field trips to the summit are planned in the coming weeks, continuing the momentum of pilot field trips last spring – thanks to generous funding from the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund’s Empowering Coos Youth Grant Program.
With your support, and the recent bequest received from the Sheldon Family Estate, we aspire to become the go-to resource for weather and climate science learning.
New Funding for Research
As we focus our educational offerings on schools, we have also taken steps to continuously increase the rigor of our own science.
Thanks to funding announced last week by the Northern Border Regional Commission, we will upgrade 11 of our Mount Washington Regional Mesonet stations and add 18 new stations over the next three years.
This will advance our forecasting, provide rich data across mountainous terrain, facilitate research with partners, and help our region’s businesses plan for economic development. We are so thankful to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Representative Ann McLane Kuster, and Representative Chris Pappas (and their staffs) for their support of our application.
The Observatory was also awarded funding as part of a network of groups working on an Environmental Information Exchange Network Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, which will establish high-elevation observation of weather across the Northeast. This network will be integral to data needed for our region to prepare for extreme weather and changes to climate.
Words alone can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be leading the Observatory at this exciting time. I encourage each of you reading these words to reach out to me and get involved with our work. You make all that we do possible. And if you are an educator interested in our new programs, please definitely get in touch so we can sign you up.
Sincerely,
