Gulf Coast State College adds state-of-the-art weather station to main campus
Panama City, Florida – Almost one year after Category 5 Hurricane Michael made landfall less than 15 miles away from campus, Gulf Coast State College has installed the first of its three planned state-of-the-art weather stations, starting with its main campus in Panama City.
This scientific instrument package installed by WeatherSTEM not only brings state-art-technology monitoring to the campus for safety, it also includes a host of data mining tools, and hundreds of educational weather lessons in a innovative curriculum that is designed to help better understand all the myriad ways weather impacts just about everything.
To access the Gulf Coast State College – Panama City WeatherSTEM unit:
Visit it online at: https://bay.weatherstem.com/gulfcoast
One of the main benefits of the WeatherSTEM system, is the unit also has a live web camera. The camera faces a southeast direction from the main campus and captures a view over the southern part of Panama City. Those who view it will see a real-time video feed of what is called the “cloud camera”.
Not only will you be reading real-time meteorological data such as wind speed, wind direction, temperature, dew-point, pressure, to name a few, but you can see what the conditions look like at that moment.
The cloud camera also has one minute capture that is recorded to the cloud service, with the real-time weather information from the weather station allowing users to go back and view a days worth of data and video, which becomes available the following day.
As part of the package for WeatherSTEM, a online database is available for data mining by students and teachers of all the meteorological conditions that were recorded by the instrument package. The WeatherSTEM unit also brings real-time weather conditions that are occurring right on campus, to the finger tips of instructors for some programs on campus that need that data for classroom or lab instruction such as Unmanned Vehicle Systems Program at Gulf Coast State College.
“In regards to WeatherSTEM, our Unmanned Vehicle Systems Program can now monitor and adapt to hourly weather changes for the safety of our students and equipment” said Jose Lopez-Baquero, Program Manager for the Unmanned Vehicles Systems at Gulf Coast State College.
Other programs at the college are also very excited in the technology and tools that the installation of the WeatherSTEM unit has brought to the campus, including the Natural Sciences Department.
“I am very excited for my students to use real data to assess climate conditions in Bay County. Having students analyze data is a great way to teach them how to do science!” said Linda Fitzhugh, Professor of Biology
The other campuses which include Gulf Coast State College Public Safety Campus in Southport, and the Gulf/Franklin Campus in Port St. Joe will be receiving there units in the coming weeks.
If you are interested adding or learning more about WeatherSTEM for your organization, visit them online for more information.
WeatherSTEM is also available on Android and iOS app stores. Search Gulf Coast State College to see realtime conditions at the main campus in Panama City, Florida.
