15 October 2004

Educator uses data logger to monitor Hurricane Charley

Vernier is a manufacturer of a very popular line of data loggers used by many schools and by some citizen scientists. The Fall 2004 issue of The Caliper, A Publication for Users of Vernier Products, includes an intriguing hurricane story made possible by its products.

Curt Witthoff is a Secondary Math/Science Specialist for Collier County Public Schools in Naples, Florida. He used Vernier sensors with a Vernier LabPro and a Texas Instruments graphing calculator to record temperature, pressure and relative humidity during the passage of Hurricane Charley on 13 August 2004.

According to the story in The Caliper, Witthoff placed the instruments in a box on his patio with the sensors exposed.

The data plotted at left clearly show the sharp drop in atmospheric pressure as the hurricane passed by. The temperature dropped sharply after the peak of the storm, as did the solar irradiance.

Note that the relative humidity exceeded 100 percent. The article in The Caliper suggests this resulted from condensation in the electronics. The humidity readings came back into range after the temperature increased.

Curt Witthoff's Hurricane Charley observations nicely demonstrate the value of data loggers in automatically collecting and storing environmental data.

Forrest M. Mims III