Source: NC CLIMATE OFFICE, 7/18/18


Earlier this month, our office's Environment and Climate Observing Network, or ECONet, grew to 42 total weather stations with the addition of a monitoring site in Chapel Hill. This was a great example of the necessary steps for putting up a new weather station, so in today's blog post, let's take a look at those key components and how the Chapel Hill site ticked each of the boxes.

A Need for Information
In mid-May, the Horace Williams Airport in Chapel Hill was decommissioned. Prior to that in late April, weather observations stopped being taken by the airport's Automated Surface Observing System, or ASOS, which had been reporting since 1999.

However, just because planes were no longer taking off or landing from the site didn't mean there wasn't still a need for weather data.

The Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) used that information to help with stormwater guidance. The National Weather Service office in Raleigh also told us that there was a great public interest in local observations from the Chapel Hill area.
Many of our ECONet stations were borne out of a similar local need. Several mountain stations are used by the Division of Environmental Quality for monitoring high-elevation winds, which can affect the dispersion of ozone and harmful pollutants.

Twenty ECONet sites across the state are located at Agricultural Research Service stations and field labs, and the weather data from our stations can be directly connected with crop yields, pest management applications, and in-field observations at those facilities.

Education is also a frequent need. We have stations at an elementary school in Buckland, a middle school in New London, a community college in Spindale, and on Bald Head Islandat the conservancy, all of which can put local scientific data in the hands of their students.

For more of this story, click here. http://climate.ncsu.edu/climateblog