Over the years, I have received many questions about why the Denver weather observations are taken at Denver International Airport, and does it make a big difference.
The basic answer is that these weather observations are needed for aviation safety, so they are taken at the airport.
Prior to the move from Stapleton International Airport to DIA, the National Weather Service did extensive comparisons of the data from both sites and found that the actual numbers were fairly close much of the time, but not all of the time.
There are some weather situations when the location makes a big difference, for example when a "back door" cold front hits DIA with wind, cold and snow hours before it gets to downtown Denver, or when heavy precipitation impacts areas closer to the mountains, compared to way out east of downtown.
I have often been asked about why the official temperatures are not given for the downtown area. All of the local TV stations have placed weather instruments at their studios, but these are not official observations and do not go into the climate records for the city.
The Denver metro area had been lacking a set of highly accurate downtown observations since the closing of Stapleton Airport and the move nearly 20 miles northeast to DIA. Since that time, the observation network for the fast-growing Denver area has consisted of a ring of reports from the suburbs, but little reliable data from the city.
Hourly observations are available from Buckley SFB (KBKF), Centennial Airport (KAPA), Denver International Airport (KDEN) and from Boulder-Jeffco Airport (KBJC). None of these sites are within 12 miles of downtown and in the case of DIA (the official observation), the site is 18 miles away from the center of the city.
The Stapleton site was used starting in the 1930s, when the airport was established there. Prior to Stapleton, the Denver observations were taken from the Denver Water Board, the Post Office, and other downtown locations since the early 1870s. The actual reporting station location has been moved four or five times over the years, for a variety of reasons.
Obviously, as scientists, we would love to have nearly 150 years of rock-solid consistent data, but we do the best we can with the changing locations. I always have said, "Talk to your congressman, not your weatherman," — as the issue is much more fiscal science and not physical science. We are talking tax dollars!
The problem with adding another weather station closer to downtown has been threefold: First, funding using tax dollars. Second, finding a suitable location — it’s difficult to find an open area in the city. Third, is getting permission from a variety of different government agencies.
The biggest issue was funding for such a weather station. Unlike a home or hobby-type weather station, official observation sites are costly, requiring expensive, extremely accurate equipment, set in a location that meets the stringent requirements of the National Weather Service. The combination of cost and finding a proper site in a crowded urban area seemed to make such a new weather station an unlikely prospect.
About 15 years ago, I worked to re-establish a high-quality weather station in metro Denver. Vaisala, a leading manufacturer of extremely accurate weather instruments, stepped in to help. Based in Helsinki, Finland, Vaisala is the world's leading maker of radiosonde equipment – the small instrument package that is sent up with weather balloons. Vaisala has a national office located in Broomfield and provided the funding and equipment to install a high-end weather station at City Park near the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
The unique synergy between Vaisala, the National Weather Service and the City of Denver enabled us to develop a new weather station in the metro area at little cost, but great benefit to taxpayers! We secured a site on the City Park Golf Course, at no taxpayer cost, from the City of Denver. This weather station performed very well for the next 10 years, but was taken down when the golf course was re-designed to better control flooding during heavy rain events. All of a sudden, we were back to square one without a home for the weather station.
Over the next year, I attempted to secure a new location for the Vaisala equipment and was searching for a suitable place for the weather station. This is not easy in an urban setting, as buildings and pavement tend to make the weather observations less accurate due to the “urban heat island” effect.
It was suggested that I check out the Urban Farm in Denver (TUF) as it would have less pavement and more grass and plants around the weather station.
I drove out to the Urban Farm (TUF) at 10200 Smith Road to survey the site. I quickly recognized the property as the exact location for the old National Weather Service office — we used to meet out there in the early 1990s for seminars between for various TV weather-casters and the National Weather Service forecasters! In fact, the foundation for the original weather observing equipment was still in place about 100 yards from the NWS office building. It seemed too good to be true that we could actually re-establish the weather observations taken over 70 years with a modern set of data in the exact same spot!
Well, it proved to be a process! The first obstacle was the equipment. Although Vaisala makes outstanding instruments, the National Weather Service did not have a service contract in place to allow their employees to service and calibrate the instruments – this is a must to ensure accurate data.
We would have to secure a new set of instruments – a costly venture. Over the next year, we ran a fundraiser and procured donations adding up to $20,000 to purchase a set of high-quality instruments from a company called Campbell Scientific.
According to Jennifer Stark, the Meteorologist-in-Charge at the Denver/Boulder NWS and Michelle Graham, the Executive Director at The Urban Farm, “we owe big thanks to Mike Nelson for his advocacy, Felicia Diamond / neighborhood boosters and of course, the financial donors of the new equipment including the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Stapleton Development Corporation, Forest City, and others”.
Below was an early accounting of donors of the new weather equipment.
Contributor Amount
Denver Museum Nature and Science $5,000
Forest City $2,500
The Foundation for Sustainable Urban Communities $2,500
Channel 7 / Urban Farm Fundraiser $10,000
Total $20,000
The Urban Farm was the collector of these donations, facilitated purchase of the specified equipment and will be transmitting the equipment to the NOAA/NWS.
There were still some issues to deal with as we had to get approval from the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Department of Commerce in order to “gift” the NWS with this set of instruments – this took many months. Coordination with the City of Denver and the Parks Department was needed in order to use their property to place the weather station. The grounds at the Urban Farm needed electrical wiring and some trenching to be done, and there was the cost of fencing the area around the weather station as well as the installation of the proper concrete pad for the weather station.
Things were proceeding when Covid hit! This brought the entire project to a halt for over a year. By the time we got back to working on the project, several people involved had retired and we had to get all of the new people from all sides up to speed.
Finally, all of the pieces have come together, the foundation was laid and ready, the fence installed and the NWS had a few new employees with the technical skills to install the gear and run it through testing and quality control. The instruments have been installed and we hope to have this weather station up and running, supplying precise measurements of temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, winds, sky conditions and precipitation, every 10 minutes.
The technicians working at the site in the pictures are:
- David Paschal, Electronics Systems Analyst at WFO Boulder
- John McCandless, Electronics Technician at WFO Boulder
- Teague Williams, Electronics Technician at WFO Boulder
- Carl Burnside, Facilities Electronics Technician (based at WFO Cheyenne, but serves many offices in CO, WY and NE)
While this data will be much more representative of the Denver Metro area, it will not replace the readings at DIA in terms of being the “official” Denver weather – it will be supplementary data.
Nonetheless, this new weather station will provide an important link to decades of weather data and records and will help connect the changes we are seeing in Denver’s climate as the world gets warmer from the changes in atmospheric chemistry from the burning of fossil fuels.
We take great pride and also some relief in finally getting this project over the finish line! A new, high-quality weather observing station providing important data to the public – all put together at very little cost to taxpayers! There will be a celebration at the weather station site at The Urban Farm sometime in November.
