School's WeatherHawk to benefit the community
By Jennifer Archibald Staff writer

WeatherHawk unit on top of high school

Carroll Schools have their own virtual weather station.

A unit on top of the high school roof collects data on real-time local weather conditions. This information is fed into the corporation's computer network. Anyone in the community with Internet access can also view the data.

The station, called Weather- Hawk, was researched by elementary teacher Susan Briggs.

"Weather and working with data is a common educational standard in many grades throughout our corporation," she said. "The WeatherHawk allows any student in the corporation access to present information and an almanac of past data that they can interpret or graph."

Briggs said the Weather- Hawk will be especially useful in math and science, at all grade levels, but can be used also in writing and other subjects as well.

Elementary teacher Larry Henning said he recently had his students make a bar graph, using the local unit's temperatures from the day before.

He said there's not much time this year, but next year when his classes talk about the weather, including temperatures, wind chills, rain amounts, etc., instead of using data from Indianapolis or Lafayette, they'll be able to use information collected at their own school.

Studying the weather Teacher Larry Henning says the school's WeatherHawk is especially useful for study units in science and math. His fifth grade students recently made a bar graph using temperatures from the weather web site from the previous day. Pictured is Cameryn Sproul. Comet photo by Jennifer Archibald

Henning said he works with the track team. A few weeks ago when it was cold outside, he looked at the WeatherHawk about 2 p.m. to see what the temperature and windchill were at school to help decide if the team was going to practice outside or inside.

Briggs said a web cam was also purchased, and when it is hooked up, a picture of the current local weather will also be available. A link to the weather web site will be put on the school corporation's web site.

"Our school is located outside of town and we do not have weather sirens that activate where we can hear them," Briggs said. "Local information and a weather camera will be very helpful in the case of severe weather for our corporation. It is also helpful in checking temperature and wind chill for recess."

She gave examples of information that is available from WeatherHawk including present temperature and highs and lows; wind speed and direction, wind gusts and the peak wind gust, humidity, dew point, wind chill, barometer readings, rainfall and accumulated rainfall amounts, times of sunrise and sunset and moon rise and moon set, heat index, and more.

Briggs said she talked with members of the community to see if the WeatherHawk might be helpful to various segments. She said she had positive responses from farmers, firefighters, and emergency responders.

"Farmers have always been big weather watchers," said Paul Marcellino, Extension Educator/ Ag.

He said local weather information, such as wind speed, barometric pressure, and rainfall amounts could be helpful for farming operations and record keeping, especially for farmers within a five-mile radius of the school.

Scott Sisson, chief of the Flora Volunteer Fire Department, said information from the WeatherHawk, such as wind direction and speed, would be helpful in fire fighting and in the case of a hazardous materials spill.

Before, the department has consulted the flight service station at Purdue, Grissom, weather service in Indianapolis, or the National Weather Service. Sisson said now they'll have a local source of weather information.

Emergency Management Director Justin Darling said he has the WeatherHawk station up and running all the time in the county's emergency operations center.

"It will be a real asset to have real-time temperature, humidity, and wind direction during severe weather conditions, and in emergency and hazardous materials situations," Darling said. He added that emergency management also uses stored data, which the WeatherHawk can provide.

Shana Bordner, PTO treasurer, said the community supports the PTO and school through trash bag sales, Market Day sales, and the collection of General Mills box tops. Those projects made it possible for the PTO to purchase the WeatherHawk and web cam at a total cost of $2,486.13. She said the PTO liked the idea of purchasing something that would be of value to all grade levels and to the community.

The WeatherHawk web site address is: http://intranet.carroll. k12.in.us/weatherhawk.