Science Guide

People send me things, its always interesting to see what comes in the inbox daily:

Dear Mr. Watts,

I have followed your blog and surface station project with great interest. On a recent trip to Italy, I found myself in a city park in  central Milan and a weather station caught my eye. I have attached a  couple of photos along with a map showing its location. The station is  attached to a lab which is part of a greenhouse in gardens. Upon seeing  the installation I just had to snap some photos to share!

Keep up the great work.

Jeff Kalt
San Francisco

Here's what Jeff sent me, a series of successively wider views of a weather station in Milan, at the Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli (public gardens). Here is more info on the place as well as an interactive Google Map. Milan's Public Gardens extend for around 16 hectares / 40 acres and it is the largest city park in Milan.  The building is the Palazzo Dugnale, housing the Greenhouse Laboratories, part of the Milan Natural Science Centre.

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Interesting thing to note here, is that this is a high-end weather station, costing several thousand dollars, with precision insturmentation, and apparently a datalogger. Though I've been unable to find any data online from this weather station. I suspect the weather station was installed by the museum there for monitoring the greenhouse lab.

Pity they couldn't put it in the middle of the park for better exposure, away from the building and walkways, but instead chose to tuck it next to the building and green awning, which I'm sure contribute to higher daytime highs and higher nighttime lows.

It just goes to show that while you can strive for the best in instrumentation, a poor choice of placement brings the instruments down to K-Mart thermometer quality levels.