Norton Sports Charity

Within our Outreach Programme at Norton Sports charity involving local schools and other organisations including Daisy Chain Autism Respite Centre, we are developing a forest schools area in our Community Forest. In order to expand the facilities which currently include an orienteering course, a bird feeding station, a fire pit and a mud kitchen we would like to develop a weather monitoring station. This could be used as part of the educational element of the forest schools area and also provide useful weather data to the on-site sports clubs and groundstaff. The area has an interesting microclimate with it often being different to the local area due to the exposed nature of the site. Children visiting the forest schools area will be able to engage with measuring and observing the weather around them, investigate how the climate around us works, learn how to gather climate data and see what effect the weather has on the environment around us .

A suitable Wireless Automatic Weather Station (AWS) costs £250 and has two separate parts, outdoor and indoor. A number of sensors are mounted outside on a mast attached to a suitable structure, with electronics that transmit data to an indoor receiver console. The AWS will measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and wind direction. The indoor console will display these measurements (plus pressure), and can also store the data. The data can be used to see how weather varies between the seasons and from year to year.