By Tania Martin
EMERALD Primary School is getting excited about the weather.
It can now forecast rain, hail or shine with the help of its new weather station.
Teacher Leigh Johnson said the school was able to buy the $2000 weather station following a successful election fundraiser in November last year.
He said school councillors and volunteers spent the morning of the State Election selling sausages at the polling booth at the school.
Mr Johnson said the weather station project is something that the school has been looking at for the past three years but hadn’t been able to get it off the ground.
It is fixed to the roof of one of the school buildings and there is also a hand-held monitor which reads the temperature.
Mr Johnson said at 3.20pm each day students print out a report from the monitor which tells them the temperature, what the UV index is and what the expected top temperature will be the following day.
He said this also tells the students how many layers of clothing they need to wear that day. “This allows us to keep both air conditioners and heater off as long as possible to help reduce green house gas emissions.”
Mr Johnson said anyone in the hills can get excited about the weather in Emerald by logging onto the school’s website at www.eps.vic.edu.au.
Mr Johnson said the UV rating is also important because it tells the school how hot the sun is.
“If the UV rating is too high then we can tell the students they need to go inside or play in the shade,” he said.
Mr Johnson said having the weather station is a great way to teach the children how the weather can impact on them.
“The station feeds into our website so everyone in the world can know what the weather is doing in Emerald.”
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