Cuts Cloud CSUN’s Weather Operations

Like a sunny day in the Southland, many people take weather station operations for granted.

And for more than a quarter century--especially in the last eight years, after a computerized communication system was installed--the weather station at Cal State Northridge ran like clockwork, recording temperature, wind speed and precipitation levels every five minutes and automatically reporting them to the National Weather Service every hour.

But last year, when budget cuts affected nearly every level of the university’s operations, it became clear that not even the sun, wind and rain were sacred.

“It’s a confounding situation,” said William Bowen, chair of the geography department at CSUN. “As a society becomes ever more impoverished, completely unthought of resources are diminished. This is just a very little example of that problem.”

When the last full-time weather observer left the university in June of 1992, budget restraints prevented a new observer from being hired. The position, which had been filled by a full-time student, paid between $2,400 and $2,900 a month.

About a year ago, without someone to oversee the operations of the $300,000 system, Bowen said, breakdowns started to plague the computers, leading to inaccurate and missed measurements.

Bowen said he has received dozens of calls from people wondering why the National Weather Service no longer reports temperatures from Northridge.

“As the chair of the department, I can be just as concerned and upset,” he said. “But I also know well that operations of weather stations are not the highest priority of a university.”

Now, part-time weather observers, who are geography students, take turns working in the weather station.

However, Bowen said, for operations to be accurate, a full-time person is needed.