The Los Angeles Pierce College Weather Station was instituted on 01 July, 1949 under the direction of the late A. Lee Haines. Mr. Haines was professor of Botany with a great love and respect for weather. He ran the weather station for 22 years before retiring in 1971. Command of the weather station at that point was passed on to James Vernon; professor of Geology and Meteorology. He ran the weather station for another 15 years before handing over command to current station Director, William H. Russell -- professor of Meteorology and Geography -- in 1986. Professor Russell has been featured in weather-related articles in the Los Angeles Times as a reliable source of meteorological and climatological information for the San Fernando Valley.

The weather station is one of the oldest weather stations in the nation, with records covering the latter half of the 20th century and continuing to this date. Todd Morris, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service (NWS) out of Oxnard, California, is quoted in the L.A. Times newspaper stating only 10% of the thousands of weather stations nationwide have records dating back more than 50 years (as of 1999). It is without a doubt that the Pierce College weather station is among an elite few stations on the planet with deep, reliable archives of weather data. Dessa Emch, Cooperative Program Manager for the NWS, has stressed the importance of our weather station as being a weather station with the most sought after archive of data in the Los Angeles Basin.

Our weather station has -- for all intents and purposes -- never been moved from its current location and has consistently used the same equipment (calibrated frequently) at the same time of day for over 50 years. The only move was the weather shelter unit itself, which was moved less than 3 meters northwest of its original position in January of 1974. This small move was necessary to provide space for new equipment acquired through funding by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to James Vernon for the weather station.

Our college is proud of the fact that our weather station archives are free of data gaps (missing data). In over 55 years of hand-collected data records, only 3 days of data are missing. These 3 days of missing data occurred on November 1-3, 1960. On Halloween night (October 31, 1960), vandals trespassed on weather station grounds and dismantled the weather shelter and its weather-recording contents. It took 3 days to acquire new equipment and re-assemble the shelter to specifications set forth by the NWS. With only 3 days of missing data out of well over 20,000 days, it is no wonder why our station holds the most sought after and respected weather data in the basin!

The consistence and dedication of A. Lee Haines, James Vernon and William H. Russell are the reason the station's archives are as deep, accurate, and consistent as they are. In October 1997, Steve W. Woodruff, then a student at Pierce College, took over weather observations under the direction of Professor Russell. In addition to the Pierce College Weather Station, Mr. Woodruff helps to operate 17 other weather stations across Southern California with fellow weather observers Tim Boyle and J.B. Wall. These stations include sites at Deep Springs, Zzyzx, 5 stations on San Clemente Island (OP1, OP2, Eel Point, Nanny, Hoeppel), 6 stations on Santa Cruz Island (Main Ranch, Prisoners' Harbor, Campo del Norte, Willows, Christy Ranch Airfield, Christy Pines), 2 stations on the California State University, Northridge (CSUN) campus, 1 station on Anacapa Island, and the ASOS unit at the Van Nuys Airport (the busiest general aviation airport in the world). He has also been to weather stations in the Canary Islands (Tenerife, La Gomera, Lanzarote, El Hierro & Gran Canaria), Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jordan, Egypt, India and various countries across Europe from Portugal to Greece.

The weather station grounds are kept clean and free of any obstruction which may adversely affect proper measurements of wind, temperature and precipitation records. Ground cover at the station consists of small pea gravel and dirt. A grassy field over an acre in size is to the west and south of the station, and a small single lane paved road lies approximately 30.5 m (100 feet) to the east of the station. This road is infrequently used for access to the college's horticultural area. The north side of the station consists of grasses and cacti.

All trees and large shrubs around the station's perimeter are thinned out and cut short so as not to disrupt airflow around and within the station area. All instrument housing units are painted white to minimize adverse effects excess long-wave heat radiation has on station instrumentation thereby maximizing the accuracy of meteorological readings. All thermometers are kept exactly 1.68 m (5 feet 6 inches) above ground level to avoid small thermal inversions which are common immediately above ground level. This height is also the standard height used by weather stations around the world.

All station temperatures are recorded in Fahrenheit degrees; Fahrenheit to Celsius degree conversion is demonstrated by the following equation: F = 1.8°C + 32°, where F is Fahrenheit degrees and C is Celsius degrees. All pressure readings are measured in inches of mercury and converted to millibars for both mean sea level and station elevation (240.8 m or 790 feet above mean sea level). Evaporation Pan water loss and precipitation events are measured in inches; Inches to Centimeter conversion is demonstrated by the following equation: C_m = I x 0.3937, where C_m is centimeters and I is inches. Precipitation is measured to the hundredths of an inch whereas evaporation pan loss is measured to the thousandths of an inch.

Station temperature data has been used by the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) officials to help them determine the most efficient type of air conditioning units to install at Pierce College. Kevin A. Smola of Kevin A. Smola and Associates of Pasadena states, "When we designed the [air conditioning] system, we used temperatures from the on-campus weather station rather than temperatures from Los Angeles (USC)." For climatological purposes, data from Pierce college is far more substantive than any other station in Los Angeles.

Data from the Pierce College Weather Station has also been used by local businesses for related reasons, and is used constantly by undergraduate and graduate students from colleges and universities across the nation.

Weather data from our station is published in Climatological Data as "Canoga Park Pierce College" in spite of the fact that the Pierce College Weather Station is the official recording station for Woodland Hills, CA. The reason for the Canoga Park reference is due to an age old zip code glitch stemming from 1950. Presently, Canoga Park borders Pierce College to the north of campus, however, in 1949 when the station was implemented, Canoga Park extended into and beyond the Pierce College campus eastward into what is today Woodland Hills. In fact, Woodland Hills was not created until 1950. It was at this time when Pierce College was no longer in Canoga Park. The geographic location of the station and campus remains the same, but the name of the city in which they reside has changed. By 1950, the Pierce Weather Station was already being published under Canoga Park (from the previous year -- 1949) and continues to be referred to as "Canoga Park Pierce College" in the Climatological Data publication to this day.

UPDATE: Dessa Emch, Surface Program Manager at the National Weather Service has officially changed our weather station's name from "Canoga Park Pierce College" to "Woodland Hills Pierce College" as of July 1, 2006. =)

Station observations include evaporation rates, daily mean temperature, dew point temperature, relative humidity, duration of sunlight, precipitation measurements, barometric pressure, 20 mm depth soil temperature, maximum temperature and minimum temperature data. An earthquake damaged pyrometer and wind velocity measuring equipment.

In January of 1994, a major earthquake struck the San Fernando Valley (dubbed the Northridge Earthquake) measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was just over 3 miles from the Pierce Weather Station. Unfortunately, this earthquake damaged expensive equipment housed in the shack at the weather station, including wind velocity-recording equipment and altimeters. Though this equipment was lost, data collection of important temperature, precipitation and evaporation continued without gaps.

Beginning on June 24, 1999 Steve W. Woodruff began hand compiling over 50 years of paper records, inputting data into a computer and creating a website from which anyone could log into to access previously difficult information to obtain. After several months of daily data entry, the arduous task of putting data online was completed. By 1999, this website was launched, and for the first time in station history all temperature and precipitation data was made available for public viewing. William T. Reid, a climatologist out of Agoura Hills, CA helped correct data discrepancies during this process when discrepancies arose.

"I was in San Diego on vacation at the time and had my laptop from work with me. I was curious to know what the largest diurnal range ever recorded at Pierce College was and decided to start inputting data from paper records into Microsoft Excel. Almost 8 months later I had finished entering every temperature extreme and rainfall total ever recorded at Pierce. I spent so much time entering this data I thought I should probably learn how to make a website so that I could share this with the community. After all, the weather station is not only here to provide invaluable climatological data to the NCDC, but is also here for the community and students. What better way to share the gold mine of data this station has collected over the last half century than to put it online." -Steve W. Woodruff

In October of 1998, Gary Ryan of the NWS donated a new double-traversing weighing rain gage motor, weighing scale, weather shelter with aluminum stand, mercurial maximum thermometers, alcohol minimum thermometers, and aspirating motor for psychometric purposes to our station. Additionally, Mr. Ryan provided our station with a MMTS unit (Maximum Minimum Temperature Sensor) which reads out daily extreme ambient temperature values on a digital screen. In February 1999, Mr. Ryan returned to our station to re-calibrate all our equipment which helped ensure a continuum of the precise weather data that our college provides for the public, media, academic, private and government sectors.

On 01 July, 1999, the weather station celebrated its 50th year of operation. The event was attended by the widow of A. Lee Haines, as well as James Vernon and William H. Russell. Also in attendance were various meteorologists, climatologists, newspaper reporters from the L.A. Times and Daily News newspapers, geography students and Pierce College President, Darroch "Rocky" Young. An interesting side note: this same day, the new automated ASOS station at USC was implemented which would record official data for Los Angeles City in general.

According to the NOAA Technical Memorandum of January 2000, the Pierce weather station holds both maximum and minimum air temperature extremes for the entire L.A. Basin with an all-time low of 18°F and an all-time high of 116°F. The memorandum makes note of temperatures at the Pierce College Weather Station exceeding 100°F for 14 days in a row, and having an average of 18 freezing dates (at or below 32°F) per year. This makes the Pierce Weather Station one of the 2 coldest valley stations in the L.A. Basin. The memorandum was compiled by David Bruno, Senior Forecaster for the NWS, Gary Ryan, retired-Data Program Manager for the NWS, and then interns, Curt Kaplan and Jonathan Slemmer of the NWS.

In summer of 2003, William H. Russell successfully obtained $10,000 from Pierce College to purchase a new fully automated weather station to run in addition to traditional manual observations taken from existing instrumentation. With the help of Steve W. Woodruff, Professor Russell purchased the equipment necessary to implement the automated station.

In December 2003, Professor Russell and Mr. Woodruff installed the new Campbell Scientific MetData-1 weather recording station. The station is supported by a 10-foot aluminum tower with a weather shelter mounted at the standard 5' 6" height. The station records solar radiation in watts per meter squared, precipitation in inches, maximum, minimum, dew point and current air temperature in both degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius degrees, atmospheric pressure in millibars (for station elevation), wind speed and direction in degrees of the compass and miles per hour respectively, and soil temperature at a depth of 20 mm. Precipitation data will not only be recorded as a total amount in a 24-hour period, it will also be recorded on an event-triggered basis so that storm intensity at specific times will now be known.

Programming for this station was written by Steve W. Woodruff with help from J.B. Wall, Weather Observer at CSUN and Tim Boyle, an Information Technology Consultant at CSUN. This new station has a voice modem which can be called at anytime by anyone to obtain current conditions at Pierce College. The phone number for the weather station is provided on this website. Also, hourly data will be automatically updated (hourly no doubt!) to this website. Data recorded by this new automated weather station will not be used as official data for a 2-year period. During this time, manually-recorded data from existing equipment will continue to be used while data recorded from the new automated station will be recorded for comparative analyses only. By the year 2006, a gradual shift from manual observation data to automated observation data will begin. This slow, careful and tedious transition process is necessary to ensure long-term climatological data integrity which Pierce College's weather station is known for.

Our website is visited by colleges and universities from California to Cairo, our data used in countless senior thesis projects and professional research the world over. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about the Pierce College Weather Station! We hope you find our website useful.

-Steve W. Woodruff
Certified Weather Observer