The Weather Stations for Primary Schools project is a Fingal County Council initiative designed to encourage more detailed rainfall record keeping in the county!
This initiative commenced in June of 2021 and was made possible by project lead Kevin Valley(FCC Executive Engineer) and the collaborative efforts of the Fingal County Council, WOW Met Eireann, Digital Fingal, and OPW.
This project was supported by the Chief Executive Innovation Fund which was set up last year by the Chief Executive of Fingal County Council, AnnMarie Farrelly. The Innovation Fund was created to encourage employees to come up with new innovative ideas to improve the council. Of the 14 innovative ideas submitted to the council, the weather station for the school project was selected as one of four projects to receive funding from the Innovation Fund.
In the project’s initial phase, the former Deputy Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Robert O’ Donoghue presented a rain gauge to the third class at the Rusk and Lusk Educate Together National Schools. With the success of this rain gauge launch, Deputy Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Daniel Whooley launched the second phase of the project in September 2021. Schools across Fingal’s County Council’s seven local electoral areas were invited to express interest in hosting one of their own automatic weather stations. By operating their own weather stations, primary schools have the opportunity to help collect vital weather information.
Climate change and flooding are major problems that society in Ireland is facing. These automatic weather stations play an important role in helping children understand climate change and its effects and helping meteorologists accurately predict weather conditions. Met Eireann climate scientists can also use this information to monitor Ireland’s climate changes. Information gathered from the weather stations is visible on Met Eireann Weather Observations website WOW.ie. Real-time data is provided on the website for the public to view and to also share their measurements.
- https://www.fingal.ie/news/first-primary-school-fingal-receives-automatic-weather-station
- https://www.fingal.ie/news/primary-schools-receive-weather-station-rain-gauge