Have you ever wondered what the temperature is in the middle of campus, not as far away as midway?  With the lake so close, this can sometimes represent a really significant change, just watch Tom Skilling on WGN (or read the interview in Noyes Magazine):

Using funding awarded by Student Government, the Ryerson Astronomical Society purchased a Vantage Pro2 weather station from Davis Instruments and installed it at our observatory on the roof of Ryerson Physical Laboratory on the main quads.

This weather station collects local weather data, such as temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, and solar radiation, and it transmits this information to a receiver in our office below.

The closest major Chicago-area weather data comes from Midway Airport, but often the weather in Hyde Park is quite different due to the lake effect.  The data collected by our weather station is more local and therefore more relevant.

The weather station is completely wireless and is solar powered.

We have developed a website to display this data, as well as live feed from the National Weather Service.  This can be accessed at http://weather.uchicago.edu/.

We hope that the weather station will be a useful tool not only for our observatory but for all of campus.

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