News

Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer

An automatic weather station (AWS) built by the Bureau of Meteorology on Avondale College's Lake Macquarie campus is now operational.

The station measures temperature, humidity, rainfall, air pressure, and wind speed and direction each hour. It is located in a paddock on the southeast side of the campus, near an existing station. The existing station is one of two already located on the campus. One contains a standard manual rain gauge, measured by Dr Howard Fisher, dean of the Faculty of Arts and a senior lecturer in geography, at 9 am each day. The other contains a solar-powered automatic rain gauge, which transmits a signal via radio wave to the bureau as part of the state's flood warning network.

Howard says having an AWS on campus is good for the college. "If I were a student, I'd be impressed," he says.

The college has been the official location of rain measurement in Cooranbong for the past 15 years and from 1903 to 1934 (the postmaster at the former Cooranbong Post Office measured rainfall between 1935 and 1993).

Visit http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/nsw/sydney-observations-map.shtml and click on "Lake Macquarie" for data from the AWS.

Caption: Dr Howard Fisher stands beside the new automatic weather station at Avondale College.
Credit: Ann Stafford