Weather station a learning tool for CIT students

Oct. 14, 2019

 

     Students in Ashland Community and Technical College’s computers and information technology program are putting their studies to use in a practical way.
     The Technology Drive Campus now has a new weather station that measures temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, dew point, wind speed and direction, total precipitation and rate, solar radiation and other metrics. The model is a similar but updated version of one that was installed a couple of years ago to promote a partnership between the college and the community, as well as give students experience with real data, said David Childress, computers and information technology professor.
     “The data points mentioned are saved every 5 minutes, 24/7,” Childress said. “We can save the accumulated data to a micro SD card and then call it up in Excel or other spreadsheet. The data can be manipulated to show maximums, minimums and averages, for example. We can also create charts and graphs to show trends over time. We can choose the time frame we want to look at, for example, the past week, month, or year, or any particular span of time desired in the stored data.”
     Those interested in following the weather station can visit https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KKYASHLA13.
     There is also a Wunderground app for Android and Apple. Once the app is installed, search for the station ID KKYASHLA13.