Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
In all my years of watching KSL, or any news organization for that matter, all ‘official' temperature readings for Salt Lake City are taken from Salt Lake International Airport. That also holds true for rainfall amounts. Why is that? The airport is so far away from any place with living people, that it hardly means anything to anyone. Why not take temperature and precipitation readings for Salt Lake City from downtown Salt Lake City? Or somewhere in the middle of the city where there are actual inhabitants?
Lance P.
***********************************************************
Temperature readings that you see often on our newscast, the ones around the state that is are often reported by a little machine called the ASOS. ASOS stands for Automated surface observing system.
There are nearly 1000 ASOS sensors, many of them near airports. You have a great point for sure in saying, well no one lives at the airport, so why is the sensor there anyway?
I think part of the original placement plan for ASOS was to be near FAA observers and NWS forecasters. This way, they could fix any problems with the ASOS. And putting ASOS in one place and keeping it there, ensures our climate data to be historically accurate. Since our climate data has most always come from the airport, we can take valuable information on that one place.
But, since you don't live at the airport, that doesn't seem to make much sense. Just double checking with Kevin Barjenbruch from the NWS Salt Lake, he also agreed that the continuity of the record keeping is key. He also said that because aviation is so sensitive, that is yet another reason why we need a sensor at the airport.
Speaking with meteorologist Josh Nichols of WHEC in Rochester NY who has done some lengthy research on the history of ASOS revealed some additional information. Josh said that once aviation really took off in the 1930's, is when most of the sensors moved to the airport locations. Before that, is when the sensors were more in other locales like city parks or town halls.
In the meantime, since you don't live at the airport there are a lot more weather stations they just either aren't government mandated or might even be at your neighbor's house. Check out the University of Utah's mesonet. It has a ton of information and a lot of thermometers and rain guages that you can access all over the place.
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
