Calgary Airport Weather Stations

Recently, I had the chance to visit a weather observer at CYYC, who gave me the lowdown on how things work there. First, the data that is used by MSC's and others' public products is sourced from the Nav Canada contracted station "Calgary Intl A". There is also a second automatic site taking observations that is operated by ECCC, which is the climate site "Calgary Int'l CS". The latter site's instruments actually exist a stone's throw from the weather observers' station, while the observer's actual instruments exist 2km SW of their location, feeding back information about temperature, humidity, and windspeed. A distance of 2km is enough to lead to a slight difference in observed values at times, which we have seen on occasion between the two stations. The other two official stations nearby are those near Canada Olympic Park and at Springbank Airport (which is an auto station as well for some reason, despite being one of Canada's busiest VFR airports).

Google Earth image of Calgary International Airport, and location of weather stations

The observer takes hourly observations of sky conditions and visibility (or more frequently during changeable and significant weather), as well as measurements of precipitation when applicable. The observer's site has a staircase that goes to the roof of the trailer for a clear, 360 degree view of the sky and surrounding horizon. North of the cabin exists a level plot atop which the ceilometer sits (for determining cloud base height/vertical visibility), as well as a rain gauge, a de-commissioned tipping bucket rain gauge, a snow gauge (inside an inverted bell, used for measuring liquid equivalent of snow every 6 hours if applicable), and a weaver snow board (which is a white wooden board used with a wooden ruler to take hourly snow totals, being reported as cumulative every hour that at least a centimetre falls for 6 hour periods, before being dusted off to start again). 

The barometer is inside the observer's cabin, with those values (as well as those of the temperature, humidity, and wind speed) being electronically fed into the system. The values of the ceilometer, sky condition, visibility, and precipitation are manually input by the observer. 

Looking north from the observation deck at the on-site instruments

Observer's trailer and observation deck

A cold, lonely chair on the roof

Barometer showing station pressure inside the cabin

The large copper cylinder sits inside the snow gauge bell collecting snow, before being melted down and poured into a beaker via a funnel

The weaver snow board

A closer look at the snow gauge 

The ECCC-MSC climate station across the road from the observer's cabin