Maybe the title was a tip off to the change in management of this blog, or maybe it was the elapsed two years, but as Chance the Rapper proclaimed and I lifted for this title, WE BACK. By which I mean the Carleton Weather Station once again necessitates an assistant, which is now me, Anne! See profile for more details.
This is my second week on the job, and thus far a majority of my work has involved familiarizing myself with the massive arsenal of equipment and software involved in this project. To be honest, I had no idea that Carleton had anything to do with weather before applying for this job, and indeed it does! And does it ever. The word is that Carleton has the oldest weather records in the state of Minnesota, dating back to 1881. Additionally, I just learned today that Carleton used the instruments housed at the Goodsell Observatory to set an accurate time for the region, to which the Western US subsequently synced their clocks. Which sounds to me like quite the big deal.
The methods then used for doing so included sextant use, a skill which I possess and never once thought I would have to call upon again. The sextant is a beast of an instrument, measuring the angle from the sun to the horizon. With the use of a couple of different almanacs and the knowledge of your degree of latitude, the exact time can be calculated! But let me tell you from experience, it is quite the calculation involved. I recently completed a SEA Semester, where we put this skill to use on the high seas, our efforts justified by the phrase, “We’re all one fuse away from Columbus.”
Currently, Carleton has several weather tracking instruments in the field that measure all of the neat things reported at weather.carleton.edu. These devices report to a Unix-based machine which records the data, and ships it off to a connected Mac which updates the aforementioned weather page. Updates are always welcome and necessary, so that’s what I’ll be working on for my summer here! I’ll keep all you readers in the loop in the meantime, thanks!
Anne