Mayo school's weather station to feed data to global networks
The new weather station at St Muredach's College in Ballina.
Students at St Muredach’s College in Ballina will be using the school’s newly mounted weather station to feed data to global weather networks, as well as Met Eireann and NASA, to assist with their weather analysis.
The Davis Vantage Vue Weather Station at St Muredach’s College will provide students with professional grade, real-time weather data every 2.5 seconds, measuring metrics such as wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric pressure, rainfall and temperature.
St Muredach’s Geography teacher Finola Cunningham told the that the new weather station will allow students to engage with data in a practical and meaningful way.
“Students will be able to learn about weather and climate in a much more hands-on way. They will be able to see what’s happening in terms of weather, create weather diaries to analyse or present their own forecast,” she said.
Ms Cunningham said the new technology will open a range of possibilities for students at the school.
“There is also the potential for the science and maths department to make use of the data generated by this technology.
“I think it is going to make Geography more interesting and students are more likely to engage with this kind of technology involved. They’ll be able to understand how the data relates to the weather they are observing.”
The weather data collected at St Muredach’s College will link in with national and international networks.
“This is professional grade data," Ms Cunningham explained. "We’ll be able to link our weather info in with WOW-IE, which is the weather observation’s website of Met Eireann that links in with a global network of weather observers with technology similar to ourselves,” she added.
“We will also be able to upload to GLOBE, which is climate change research supported by NASA. Our students will be able to look into the data collected all over the world and learn further this way."
Ms Cunningham said the initiative will also benefit the local community.
“We’re also going to be able to serve the local community by having the data we collect embedded into our school website. People in the community will be able to check the local weather from the data we gather on our website.”
The weather station was kindly donated to the school by local company Inmo-Tech and was erected with the help of Coleman’s, who supplied a cherry picker for the job.
