UP News
 
   
   
   
   
Editor-in-Chief:
James Stankowicz
Assistant Editor:
Steven Hochman
Layout Director:
George CB Ling
Online Editor:
Steven Hochman
Staff Writers:
Victor Albert
Brady Nash
Eric Swanson
Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Amlan Biswas

 
   
Physics Weather Station: Not quite the “Weather-Control Device” from Red Alert 2 but still cool nonetheless
by Steven Hochman

If you go to the physics building you will notice a box with equipment in it on the west side of the atrium. That equipment is the Texas Weather Instruments WRL-25 weather station located at UF and it’s available for everyone to see. What you might not see, however, is the weather sensors on the roof that the box is connected to. The sensors can detect the standard array of weather phenomena: temperature, wind speed/direction, rainfall, humidity, and p r e s s u r e , as well as some more esoteric data like lighting counts and solar intensity. The weather station records and logs the weather data in its internal memory. The data is then downloaded to a computer through a network connection and is displayed graphically. If you are not in the physics building for some odd reason and thus cannot look at the display in person there is a website that displays the same info. (http://www. phys.ufl.edu/weather/).