Sensor gone missing?

Russ Steele

Continueing our quest to find USHCN Stations we visited Panquitch, Utah near Cedar Breaks National Monument. As you can see  the Stevenson Shelter is missing from it’s stand behind the Forest Service Office in Panguitch. The Forest Service Office was listed in the NCDC’s Meta Data file as the location and manager of the station.

When Ellen and I discovered that the temperature shelters was missing I went in to the USDA Agriculture Office, which was the closest to vacant stand and asked about the shelters where abouts. They said the Forest Service, next office down, was responsible and not the USDA. See the graphic

Click for a larger image.

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The lady in the Forest Service Office said she had no idea where the Stevenson Shelter was, or an automate sensor.

When was it move I asked?

“Some time back,” she said.

How far back I asked.

“A while ago”, she said.

Changing my strategy I asked about any other Forest Service facility in the area that might know where the temperature sensor was.

“None,” she said.   Hummmm. . .

Back in our GMC I got out my laptop and looked at the Google Map of the shelter site.  Doing some map matching we found, the Forest Service Maintenance Yard, or as they call it the Service Center.  On our arrival we drove around the yard looking for a MMTS sensor, or a Stevenson Shelter.  While there were multiple cars in the yard, no once could be found to answer our questions about the shelter or an MMTS. We drove around the block, behind the facility, and searched the site with high powered binoculars. No MMTS, or shelter but we did see a green truck drive in to the yard. Returning to the Service Center we asked two people about the temperature sensors MMTS.

“Not here.” they said. “Boyd in the down town office should knows where it is.”

We returned to the down town office, and this time found another lady who said, “Boyd has the afternoon off.”  She thought temperature sensor had been moved to the Middle School.

“Where is the Middle School,” I asked?

“Go to the four way stop, turn left, go one block, turn right, the Middle School will be one block on the left,” she said.

“Let me write that down,” I said, scribbling in my note book.

We followed the directions, but it was an Elementary School, not a Middle School. Hummmm.
The Elementary School Principle, said Casper was not at his school. He called the Middle Schools, but no one answered. We followed his directions to the Middle School and searched grounds. No MMTS or Stevenson shelter.  The school seemed to be boarded up.  Why put a temperature sensor, that has to be read every day at a boarded up Middle School?   Having come to the end of the business day, and our search options, we decided to move on to our next weather station target in Parawan. We had to be on out way, as it was a holiday and everyone has gotten an early start.

I plan to call Boyd someday real soon now and ask him, “What did the Forest Service do with the weather station?”