Keeping a weather eye on the Sisters Country

There's an old saying that goes, "everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it." Well, that can't be said of Sandy Sharp. She records it.

Sharp works at the Sisters Ranger District office and, as a member of the Cooperative Observer Program (COOP), is responsible for taking daily weather measurements.

An information assistant by title, Sharp begins each workday by raising our nation's flag on a nearby pole. At that time she estimates wind speed by how the flag is moving, and notices the sky conditions. Then, from the comfort of her office, she electronically polls the outside temperature sensor for the current reading and the high and low temperatures for the previous 24-hour period.

Next, it's back outside to measure precipitation. Rainfall/snowfall is collected in a large metal cylinder. The water is then poured into a smaller container just one-tenth the volume of the collecting cylinder so that the depth may be more easily read by a stick with graduations marks of 0.01 of an inch.

"If there is ice or snow in the cylinder, I have to let it melt before taking the measurement to get the liquid water equivalent," says Sharp. "I also measure snow depth at several locations and take an average."

After the data have been collected, Sharp records the information on a paper form. She then gets on her computer, inputs the data into a spreadsheet, and sends it to the National Weather Service office in Pendleton. At the end of the month, she mails copies of the paper form to Central Electric Cooperative and various other individuals for their private use.

The COOP consists of volunteer observers who take and record weather observations every day. The data from these COOP sites help to fill in voids where automated weather stations don't exist. Currently, more than 12,000 volunteers from across the country participate in this program. The goal of COOP is to provide observational meteorological data required to define the climate of the U.S. and to help measure long-term climate changes.

The Pendleton office receives reports from 87 COOP volunteers throughout Oregon and Washington. From there the information is sent to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, the repository of weather data from all over the country. Here the data are verified and processed in a number of ways to satisfy the needs of various customers. The information is also disseminated to six regional offices. The Sisters data, as well as records from many other stations in the western U.S., go to the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC) located in Reno, Nevada.

Sharp's work has allowed her to learn more about the field of meteorology. Though not a scientist herself, she has a general interest in many scientific disciplines.

"My stepdad was a physicist and my mom was a flight engineer in the Women Air Force Service Pilots and taught ground school at West Point," she said.

Sharp remembers that while growing up, dinnertime chatter usually centered about science-related topics.

"So the seeds of science were sown early, but didn't really sprout until later in life," she said.

Sharp still has a telescope her stepdad made back in the early 1950s, but she doesn't use it much anymore because of the increased light pollution near her home in Bend.

Although there are some gaps in the data, weather observations in Sisters go way back to 1906. Stations that have a long period of record are highly prized by climatologists. According to Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the WRCC, the value of an observational record increases nonlinearly with its length. Some things can only be discovered from long-term

records.

The data that Sharp and others have compiled here in Sisters is archived back to 1958, and can be found at the following link to the Pendleton weather office: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/reference/coop/index.php.

Various forms of climatological data for Sisters are available from the WRCC at http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?or7857.