When North Hill School decided to build a small weather station on the slope behind the sports hall, few students expected a patch of wet grass to become their favourite outdoor classroom. Designed in a style, the station has a flat roof, pale wooden walls and wide glass panels that look strikingly new beside the red-brick hall built in 1974. A short path leads visitors from the school gate to the entrance. The whole station of three connected parts: a sensor mast, a rain gauge and a small display room where classes can watch the figures change.
The site was not easy to prepare after the wettest March in ten years. The soil on the slope remained for weeks, so work boots sank into the ground and the builders had to lay wooden boards before they could carry in the equipment. A low fence kept younger pupils away from the tools during break time. Inside the sensor box, a small heater kept the temperature , even when cold air rolled down from the hills at night.
By early May, the station was finally ready to test. Its readings were with the official records from the town observatory, matching them closely week after week. Students recorded the figures every morning before their first lesson. When they compared a whole month of results, the school figures closely to the observatory's published charts, rising and falling at almost exactly the same points.
Not everything went smoothly, however. The team's main was the noise from the display room's cooling fan, which could be heard through the science-lab window during quiet tests. Mr Patel, who ran the project, asked the team to solve the problem before the opening day. To be of nearby classes, the students fitted a softer fan and switched it off during examinations. They also began checking the soil beside the path every Friday afternoon. Each week they measured the water of that soil and recorded the percentage in a blue notebook. In June, a week of heavy rain pushed that percentage to its highest level of the term. As a direct of the flooding, the school postponed the outdoor science fair until the path had dried.