How not to measure temperature, part 61 – maintenance optional

18 04 2008

Every time I visit NOAA’s USHCN page I cringe when I see this phrase:

“The United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) is a high quality, moderate-sized data set of daily and monthly records of basic meteorological variables from over 1000 observing stations across the 48 contiguous United States.”

The “high quality” part always gets me, particularly when www.surfacestation.org volunteers like Eric Gamberg keep finding stations like this one:


Click for a larger image

This station in New England, ND COOP ID# 326315 must be one of thoseĀ  “maintenance optional” USHCN stations. All the photos and report aren’t in, and I don’t have time for a complete analysis, since I’m leaving for my trip, but this seemed like a good parting shot.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.



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8 responses

18 04 2008
Evan Jones

Call Section-8!

18 04 2008
Frank Ravizza

She’s a beauty!

18 04 2008
Andrew

I am not worried Hansen and his boys at RealClimate will surely have an explanation for how they account for data obtained from poorly maintained weather stations. The mathematical possibilities to explain this are endless!

19 04 2008
Demesure

Do you smell the smoke of the nearby barbecue ?

19 04 2008
Novoburgo

I think if they want to preserve the shelter as an historic site they should at least perform some preventive maintenance. How about covering the roof with a fashionable blue tarp?

21 04 2008
Stan

At least somone is mowing the grass!

21 04 2008
Novoburgo

Stan I think you’ve mistaken frost kill for mowing. Give it a few months and I’ll bet that they need to hire a goat to get the grass level down below machete height.

21 04 2008
Evan Jones

It looks like Baba Yaga will sick her head out of that thing and put a curse on you.