It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Weather Station!

You won't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows once the College's new weather station is in full operation. Professor Al Werner demonstrates the apparatus atop Clapp Laboratory, which will make available data on present and recent atmospheric conditions to anyone with Web access by later this spring.

If you've walked by Clapp lately, you may have wondered about the curious-looking metal arm and swirling balls on the roof. Wonder no longer; these are sensors for MHC's new weather station. This addition to the campus skyscape will enable would-be Willard Scotts (and anybody else) to monitor weather conditions and to access information about past weather with the click of a computer mouse. Students will also be able to study meteorology in the classroom beginning next semester, when Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Jill Bubier will use it in her new environmental science course. In 2000, Tom Millette, associate professor of geography and geology, will offer a new meteorology course using the weather station.

MHC will be the only member of the Five College Consortium to offer meteorology, and is one of only two with a weather station. In fact, Associate Professor of Geology Al Werner, a major force behind the station's purchase and installation, does not know of any other small liberal arts college that uses an on-campus weather station to teach meteorology and atmospheric science.

Werner installed the sensors on Clapp's roof last month and is now collaborating with Supervisor of Electricians Kenny McKenzie to work out some wiring kinks. The sensors download information into a base unit computer, where readings are saved for archiving and further study. When the station is fully operational later this spring, anyone interested in monitoring present and recent atmospheric conditions can use the interactive computer station located on Clapp's third floor. Weather buffs will also be able to access information fed from the station to an MHC weather site on the World Wide Web. Werner even intends to mount a video camera on Clapp's roof, enabling the site to include photographs of everything from campus trees swaying in the wind to snow accumulation over a period of hours or days.

Purchased for about $600 with grant funds from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the station will be a valuable teaching and demonstration tool, according to Werner, whose area of academic expertise happens to be climate change on earth. As a kid, Werner would often sit on his family's front porch and observe thunderstorms rolling in off Lake Michigan. He retains his youthful sense of enthusiasm and wonder about weather. "Everyone has an inherent interest in weather, scientists and nonscientists alike," he says. "Weather is incredibly exciting."

The station will provide students with access to information on topics ranging from wind direction and strength, humidity, and barometric pressure to temperature and rainfall. Station users will compare local weather conditions with regional and national weather information available through the Internet and will experiment with weather forecasting. They will be able to put current weather in a historical context through a link with the Amherst Climate Record, a data bank of weather information for the Amherst area spanning the past 150 years, one of the longest climate records in the country. Information amassed through MHC's station will also be stored so that in the year 2099 there will be a record of one hundred years of weather activity in our area. As the new millennium approaches, the MHC weather station will give new meaning to putting the College on the (weather) map.

PHOTO BY FRED LEBLANC