P-UHI

I’ve been involved in meteorology in one way or another since 1976, and while I knew of the vast number of COOP stations around the USA, I never knew that a good number of them are at sewage treatment plants until I started my surfacestations.org project. It seems to me, that given the physical makeup of these facilities, they are one of the worst possible environments to measure air temperature. But like many historical stations, they weren’t chosen with the environment in mind, but rather if there was a human being present 7 days a week whom could take the high/low temps and rainfall and write it down on an NCDC B44 form.

This week I visited a few stations in southern California, and Santa Barbara is one of those USHCN stations that is also a sewage treatment plant. Conicidentally, a few other USHCN stations that are also WWTP’s were posted by www.surfacestations.org volunteers. So I thought I’d give you the grand tour.

Above: aerial view of Santa Barbara WWTP and USHCN climate station of record

Above: Placement of Santa Barbara’s MMTS Temperature Sensor - looking NW