Warmer falls, cooler springs, is the trend from 20-year-old UW weather station

From the earliest days of dial-up, campus highs and lows have been charted

WATERLOO — The University of Waterloo weather station has always updated its weather data every 15 minutes, but the process was more conspicuous when the lab first opened 20 years ago.

Back then, the dial-up modem would screech into action.

“It would phone the weather station and get the latest data,” said Frank Seglenieks, weather station co-ordinator.

While the technology has changed after two decades, the keen audience for immediate and localized weather data has not.

“Certainly it’s been good to see that there’s been so much interest in it,” Seglenieks said.

Seglenieks will reflect on the weather stacooler tion’s history, hurdles and trends at a free public presentation to mark its 20th anniversary that’s being held on the Waterloo campus on Monday at 6 p.m.

The station got its start — officially opening on Feb. 27, 1998 — thanks to some decluttering at Environment Canada.

“They had this surplus equipment and they were wondering if we wanted to take it,” Seglenieks said.

The caveat: the team had to set up a webpage to make the data freely available. That was no easy feat then, and took about as much work as setting up the equipment.

Free access to real-time weather data was rare.

“You literally had to call a 1-900 number and pay for the information,” Seglenieks said. “It really was groundbreaking at the time.” And appreciated — people from all over the world would contact the Waterloo station for data to use in research projects.

Over the 20 years the station has been operating, a shift in the winter season has become apparent as the data shows “warmer falls and springs.”

“It’s a couple months delayed,” Seglenieks said of winter in Waterloo Region.

Predicting spring weather is a long-standing tradition at the weather station with its annual contest to guess when the temperature will first hit 20 C. The idea came from the lab’s habit of guessing on weather particulars, such as how much rain there would be the next day.

“We started the contest on a whim,” Seglenieks said.

Usually about 700 entries come in each year for the day and time the UW weather station will record the year’s first 20 C. People can enter the contest until 2 p.m. on Wednesday. “It’s gotten very popular,” said Seglenieks. A reception will follow the public talk by Seglenieks on Wednesday. Tickets are free, but registration is encouraged.

Register for the anniversary celebration or enter the contest at weather.uwaterloo.ca.