Most Used “Rural” Airport for UHI adjustment

Bradford, PA

Bradford, PA, Most Influential Rural Station - Airport

Original Image with working navigation links.

In comments on another thread, Peter O’neill pointed out that Bradford Airport was the single station used in STEP2 to modify more temperature records as a “Rural” Reference Station than any other station.

Hohenpeissenberg is by no means the “greatest” rural adjusting station. that honour goes to BRADFORD/FAA AIRPORT in the USA which is used to adjust 251 urban stations

A look in the log file PApars.statn.use.GHCN.CL.1000.20 shows:

used station 725230010 251 times

which is the 8 digits of station ID and substation plus one digit of Modification flag, and number of times used. So it looks like he is correct.

I could not find it on Surface Stations ( http://www.surfacestations.org ) but a google search turned up this Bradford, PA airport.

The v2.inv file has this record, with LAT 41.80 LON 78.63 west. (Note that here the ID has the 425 country code on the front, but does not have “modification flag” since that is per data record, not per site).

42572523001 BRADFORD/FAA AIRPORT 41.80 -78.63 645 625S 10HIxxno-9A12WARM MIXED A1 0

while the airport location page gives the location as latitude 41 48’ 9.3” N and longitude 78 38’ 26.8” W.

So I’m pretty sure it is the same place, but the difference in the “minutes” area makes me wonder. But Google found only this one Bradford Airport in the USA. (Someone with more time and a faster internet connection – and maybe even a bigger screen – can do a Google Earth fly by both locations and see where they find the temperature equipment).

At any rate, they have a history page that documents their growth over time. It is still a small semi-rural “Regional” airport, but does have commercial service from Continental.

It is probably a Very Important Site for the Surface Stations project to document, seeing as it influences so many other site records.

For now, here are a couple of links that let you review the site, and look around. The only thing I could see that even remotely looked like a temperature station was a dark colored “can on a post” with those stacked “eaves” on it (visible to the right, on top of the entrance, in the picture above). But I can’t imagine that they would make a temperature can dark and put it on top of the main building, so I’m left wondering where the thermometer is and what that other thing might be:

A history and photo gallery main page:

http://www.smethporthistory.org/lafayettetownship/bradfordairport/index.html

Historical view:

http://www.smethporthistory.org/lafayettetownship/bradfordairport/planeonrunway.html

Commercial services:

http://www.bradfordairport.net/usairways.htm

Looks like they are in a special development area, so expect future industrial expansion:

http://www.bradfordairport.net/land_development.htm

Main runway 6300 feet.

http://www.bradfordairport.net/runways.htm

And a proposed Pennsylvania Air Natinal Guard site:

http://www.bradfordairport.net/proposed_NG_site.htm

Everything a “pristine rural” site with “no development” needs …