Pierce College’s weather station used its variety of high-tech instruments to track the weather as record-breaking heat swept through the San Fernando Valley this month, leaving students and faculty to cope with the effects on campus.
Physics and Planetary Sciences Department Chair Travis Orloff explained that the Pierce College weather station’s 75-year history can be credited to the advanced and plentiful instruments used to track the weather.
“This year is the 75th anniversary of the Pierce College weather station’s existence,” Orloff said. “It is the longest-running continuous weather station in a single location in the San Fernando Valley.”
Orloff detailed some of the instruments in the station including an evaporation pan, temperature sensors, humidity sensors, wind gauges and rain gauges. Orloff stated that the instruments are used not just to track heat, but all kinds of weather.
“Some of these measurements are made on a minute-to-minute basis,” Orloff said. “Some, even faster.”
Temperature is tracked and recorded much more often than other weather patterns, according to Orloff. The Western Weather Group stores all the data that is received from the weather station.
“You can see daily max and daily minimum temperatures,” Orloff said. “You can see hour by hour, and what the average temperature was for that hour.”
The mid-September heat wave that brought temperatures above 115 degrees to Woodland Hills had a scorching impact on students and staff. Meteorology and Geography Professor Jason Finley realized that he struggled to focus on work and sleep, and his productivity dipped as a result of the heat wave.
“My air conditioner could not keep up,” Finley said.
Andrew Nguyen, a biotechnology student at Pierce, must wear long-sleeved shirts, pants and close-toed shoes to protect from all the chemicals within labs. Nguyen said with the heavier clothes on, it can get stuffy resulting in the feeling of the heat even more.
“In order to be safe in the lab there is a certain dress code that you must abide by,” Nguyen said. “That means you have to wear pretty substantial pants.”
Nguyen explained that depending on the different labs a student is in, it can determine the humidity. He said that as a student during the heat wave, it could get uncomfortable to perform labs.
“In the Center for Sciences, sometimes they try to overcompensate the AC by blasting it, and it can get pretty cold,” Nguyen said. “Sometimes they just don’t have any AC at all.”
Pierce President Ara Aguiar found ways to destress and relax by staying in the shade, waking up early to go on walks and waiting until later in the day to leave work. Aguiar said she was concerned about the heat wave’s effects on student-athletes, who are constantly engaging in outdoor activities.
“My biggest concern here is, of course, our athletes, and all of the outside activities making sure that there is shade,” Aguiar said. “As a matter of fact, just this very moment, we got some tables for around the tennis courts, some umbrellas because we need more shade and that’s the long-term goal.”
Aguiar said that the college is working to get more native plants, helping shade and greenify the campus.
“One of the discussions that we’re having now, with the LACCD Build, is to create a plant list of plants that are drought tolerant, that create canopies, that survive our particular environment here at Pierce, because it is hotter here,” Aguiar said.