Mike Smith, a meteorologist for Weatherdata Services Inc. surveyed Tuttle Creek Lake near Manhattan, KS. It is COOP-A station (#148259) at the US Army Corp of Engineers Office for the reservoir there. He had a little trouble getting photos:
Click for a larger image
He writes:
“There was a silly level of security. Required to be escorted even though it is public land with a museum on site. Required that I show two ID’s.”
Funny thing though, you can see the MMTS Temperature Sensor from US Highway 24 on the Google Maps Street View that just happened to scan the entire front of the Corp of Engineers facility:
Click to see the live Google Maps Street View
So much for government photo security.
The downside of this site, like many is that it was moved from it’s original location where the Stevenson Screen once stood. The MMTS is now on the other side of the building to the left of the open gate as seen in this photo:
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The temperature measurement was moved to a place within feet of an asphalt road, where the MMTS cable can easily be brought into the office building without having to trench under the asphalt road:
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The NCDC Google Map engine shows the station getting progressively closer to the administration building over time. According to the NCDC MMS database, this station was converted from Stevenson Screen Mercury Max-Min thermometers to MMTS on 10-03-1985:
This placement of the MMTS temperature sensor closer to the building that has the electronic display for it due to cabling issues is a theme we see repeated again and again in the USHCN network. With that I’ll point out that this station is not a USHCN, but is a COOP station. Even so, this station is in the COOP-A network, which reports climate data to NCDC.
Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the data for this station to plot it for discussion here. If anyone knows how to access this station data, I welcome a note and/or link.
It is my opnion that the regular sensor moves closer to buildings and domiciles alone could account for as much as .5°C warming since 1985 when the MMTS started to be introduced.