The weather station is a tool people use to tell what the weather conditions are, such as if the weather is cold, hot, windy, or cloudy. The weather station tells us the temperature with a thermometer. It also shows us the air pressure with a barometer. Another thing it does is it measures the humidity with a hygrometer. The weather station also uses a anemometer to show us the wind speed. The wind vane shows us the direction that the wind is going . We can see this information on the computer screens, web pages, and the Internet.

Mrs. Sparnon, our school's former Media Specialist, got the idea for getting the school a weather station when Mr. Nick Stefano of Sussex County Weather came and talked to the teachers. Mrs. Sparnon's husband worked for a company called Airtron-Litton Industries. That company provides grants to schools to help fund educational projects. Mrs. Sparnon got the application from Airtron-Litton. She met with many of the science teachers at the school. She asked them to help with science language to help her fill out the grant form. She also asked Mr. Stefano for his help. Mrs. Sparnon's grant was successful and Airtron-Litton gave us the money to purchase the weather station. Mr. Sparnon doesn't use the weather station, but he is very proud that he helped the school get the weather station.

The weather station is hooked up to the computers through a series of wires. There's a wire that comes from the weather station that goes into a little black box in the library and hooks into the computers. The information gets into the computers through a computer program which is called Weather Outlook. The computer program takes the information and displays it on the computer screen as graphs and dials of weather information. Then the computer program makes web pages that we can see all over the school and even at home. All the children can use the weather station on the computers. All of the children in the school will be able to see the updated weather information all of the time.

The weather station was installed in October of 2000. Many people use the weather station at school and at home. The weather station helps the principal decide whether to close the school or not. People use the weather station for many different reasons. They use it to see if it's going to be sunny or not and to see if we're going to get snow or rain. They use that information to know how it effects their day. Some people use the weather station to collect data and learn more things about weather and to follow weather patterns. You can learn a lot of information from the weather station so go to the McKeown web page to visit the weather station more often.