Anthony Watts has observed that there is good reason for concern about USHCN stations. A reader at Anthony Watts’ blog has drawn attention to the following story in which suspicion of weather stations was taken to a new level.
The suspicious device blown up by a State Police Bomb Squad Thursday evening turned out to be a weather station.
It happened outside the Medical Office Building on the east side of Lewis Gale Medical Center. We were told a visitor contacted authorities after seeing a suspicious object hanging from a tree. Authorities brought out a robot to check it. The device was blown up around 7:00 p.m. At no time was the hospital or any other buildings at Lewis Gale evacuated.Friday afternoon, Salem Police said the package was actually a remote weather station. A hospital employee had attached it to the tree and used putty to weather-proof it. Police say no criminal charges will be filed.
Climate Audit 
14 Comments
While I can’t tell for certain, it looked like an Oregon Scientific remote wireless temp/humidity sensor similar to these:
http://www.weathershop.com/orsci_remote_t-snsrs.htm
Anthony,
Does blowing up a weather station affect it’s quality rating?
Does it make a difference if it was painted with white wash or enamel before it was blown up?
At least they aren’t going to charge the guy who just had his weather station aggressively re-calibrated.
I’m sure NOAA has developed reliable procedures for correcting temperature measurements obtained from exploding weather stations…
I notice that the station was mounted to a tree.
Do high explosives affect tree ring widths?
Maybe we should get a dendroclimatologist to consult on this?
Ok, now we’re to the point where Anthony should get a booking on Leno or Letterman. Maybe a Sixty Minutes story, too.
Great, now we’re going to get a datapoint of 451 degrees F. Thanks a lot bomb squad.
I think all the questionable weather stations should be blown up too… 🙂
Re #8
Not if they used a water bomb like the Brits do. Might impact the rain gauge if it was in the area. Under the tree :)?
Proposed new cost effective observation standard.
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Hmmm,
Bet there was one hell of a warming spike in the temperature readings at the moment of detonation.
Wonder if those wonderful adjustments will fix this? Or will they just retain the last recorded value for next decade or so, since it fits the warming trend???
I guess now they can claim it is a distributed weather station, use it as a standard and “correct” the temperature records of all the stations in the grid square to match. Plus all the previous records to account for the spike in the data. Homogenizing.It is not just for milk.
A weather-proof weather station? Is that like a train-proof railway station?