The 70th anniversary of the Pierce College Weather Station was held Wednesday to share its history engraved on a tour to discuss future plans for the weather station that involves more students and equipment that toward understanding the changing climate.
CBS-TV and ABC-TV news crews covered it, capturing footage of President Alexis Montevirgen’s introduction of the ceremony. NBC-TV was on its way, but called to apologize that their van broke down, according to the Brahma Beat.
Geography and Meteorology professor Jason Finley hosted the event, sharing a brief introduction of himself before sharing history on the weather station.
Finley also laid out plans ahead that would introduce more productivity at the weather station. He said they are planning on building a new program to focus on more student activity.
“We would love to have the station a bit more student-focused, I would love to build a program or an equity program that involves more students on campus that are taking STEM-related careers with hands-on experience,” Finley said.
As the professor gave a tour on the oldest and most recent weather equipment, he also shared what else he wants to install next into the weather station that would gather data to have a better understanding of climate change.
“Installing the automatic evaporation pan is such a piece of important equipment,” Finley said. “All of the data that we could gather with this device would be very important, especially today about the weather in Woodland Hills, but climate change in general.”
Todd Hall, Senior Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles and Oxnard, shares his appreciation toward the weather station.
“Without sites like Pierce College, we would never have known that Woodland Hills is considered the hottest location in Los Angeles, as we are still learning about climate change,” Hall said.
He said the Pierce College Weather Station provided almost one thousand named cyclones in the Atlantic basin.
“Over the last 70 years, the Pierce weather station gathered 762 cyclones and only 26 of those became hurricanes, which the United States have encountered,” Hall said. “The Pierce Weather Station remains on providing observation to us on a daily basis.”
With new equipment on the wish list, Finley is still researching ways to obtain the fully automated evaporation system to measure evaporation.
In addition, David Sawyer (from south coast air quality management), Christine Rowe (local environmental activist) and Jake Itzkowitz (a field representative for assembly Jesse Gabriel) are helping fund in an air quality monitoring device.
“The air quality monitoring device is something that we want to install next near the station,” Finley said. “With this device, it will help gather data on the air quality in the area.”
The weather station mainly runs on grants and donations, according to Finley.
Whereas in record the station had received $85,000 Grant in 2012 to improve the station and then later received a $15,000 grant from Pierce College in 2017 to update old equipment. As donations are one of the only ways to help fund the station, Finley expressed donations would help enlarge the program, as well as creating new ones.
“What makes the data from the Pierce weather station so unique compared to other weather stations is that the equipment has always had the best rural exposure which is the reason the station has never been moved around which provides consistent data,” Finley said.
Hall thanked Pierce’s weather station for every observation that they have recorded each day.
“For 25,567 days someone has taken and written down a record of observations, then manually submitted that information via phone, internet and/or mail to the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles Office,” Hall said.