BCC has established a unique capability among community colleges in the Pacific Northwest with the installation of a real-time weather monitoring and display system. Originally intended primarily as an educational tool for our Meteorology and other science classes, it has also turned out to be an increasingly popular community resource beyond the BCC campus.

This state-of-the-art but inexpensive weather station was installed in the fall of 1998, and has since undergone several upgrades and enhancements. The instruments are located on the roof of the "L" Building on the BCC campus, at an elevation of 130.5 m (428 feet) above sea level. The weather instruments measure temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, rainfall, and wind speed and direction. The system is solar-powered, and transmits data via a wireless communication link, thus avoiding any site power and cabling requirements. Real-time display units are located in the Meteorology classroom and in the lobby of the Science Division offices. In the latter case, a dedicated weather computer provides a constantly updated graphical display of the data collected by the instruments. This computer also archives the weather data for future research.

Subsequent to the system's installation, computer links were also established to enable automated uploading of data on an hourly basis to the internet, thus making the BCC data available to any interested user. Off-campus users include public schools, government agencies, and weather-sensitive industries (our weather station was recently featured in the Eastside Business Journal). The National Weather Service and the University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Department, both of whom maintain large regional weather data networks, have incorporated the data from our station into their networks, effectively making our BCC site the "official" Eastside weather station.