Weather Hot Or Cold, They Track It

By LAURA FRAZIER The Tampa Tribune

Published: Nov 21, 2007

VALRICO - Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, scientists at the National Weather Service in Ruskin keep their eyes on the skies above a 15-county stretch in West Central and Southwest Florida. And every three seconds, Dan Noah's home computer uploads to the Internet real-time atmospheric conditions as they occur in his backyard in Bloomingdale.

Noah, a National Weather Service meteorologist and self-proclaimed "weather geek," said thousands of amateur scientists across the country operate home weather monitoring stations. Weekend weather buffs, he said, typically install monitoring equipment on poles in their backyard or mount it on the roofs of their homes.

The devices collect weather data and transmit the information to a home computer, which is set to periodically refresh and upload to whichever public or private weather monitoring sites the user chooses.

Noah said the National Weather Service endorses the Citizen Weather Observer Program at www.wxqa .com, which lists more than 6,000 contributors across the country - including residents of Brandon, Valrico, Lithia and Riverview.

Amateur meteorologists may get a kick out of tracking weather patterns and tinkering with the equipment, but they are also performing an important community service.

"Our official observation sites are typically at airports, but not every county has an airport," Noah said. "In a lot of cases, we rely on home weather stations to get an idea of what's going on [in hyperlocal areas] so we can make forecasts and warnings."

He said a good system costs about $500, and the easiest to set up is a wireless station with a solar panel.

"You just put it up about six feet off the ground away from trees and fences, and the sun will charge the battery," he said.

Data posted to the Citizen Weather Observer site are reviewed for quality control by the National Weather Service forecast systems laboratory in Boulder, Colo. People in the program get a weekly e-mail showing them how their data compared with the official analysis.

From his seat at the National Weather Center, Noah sees the big picture every day and said he can vouch for the accuracy of the amateur meteorologists' postings.

"They're pretty darn good," he said.

For information about the Citizen Weather Observer Program, go to www.wxqa .com.

Reporter Laura Frazier can be reached at (813) 657-4523 or lfrazier@tampatrib.com.