Weather station installation

We got a permit to put this up on a very prime mountaintop here, Apple Orchard Mountain. And its the highest point in the central Blue Ridge. Once we actually have the site in, we actually try to focus on the actual infrastructure. In this case, it's a reinforced tripod that the station is going on. So we have to site that, stake it in. We use a number of different anchors to actually put it in place. These weather stations have a lot of different options for reporting weather data. So the basic weather observations that we see. We see temperature, moisture content, wind speed, wind direction, precipitation. But we can also monitor soil conditions, soil moisture, soil temperature. That can be important for freeze- fall cycles and growing season. We're on national forest land that's important for fire weather forecasting. The anemometer is really like 20, 25 feet in the air. The location we put it on this mountain, it's not in like the most exposed area because there's trees kinda surrounding it. So we kind of had to bring it up as much as we could to capture the best winds. It's pretty important in looking at cold air damming events or like the temperature can be a little bit cooler than surrounding areas. And just seeing how that differs from other sites around the midlantic region. You know, the thing I really love about meteorology is how we take care of the public. It's the duty that we have to make sure that everyone has what they need when they need it and that they're safe. I love the science. I am really passionate about it. I find it so interesting, the puzzle that is the atmosphere and being able to help people with that is just lovely. The students that are involved in these field installations, it's really valuable and it's a very rare get in terms of what you can get as an undergrad in meteorology. Because it's really a hands-on experience. That's a really important bullet point on a resume that not many undergrads are actually going to have.