News & Events

   Storm Peak Laboratory would like to thank Yampa Valley Community Foundation for their recent donation towards our second annual 5th grade field trip program. This education program has been developed by Storm Peak Laboratory staff members in partnership with Yampatika. Local students will participate in a 3 day program learning about weather and climate. They will also tour Storm Peak Laboratory.

SPL is located at 10,500 ft (3200 m) on Mt. Werner near Steamboat Springs, CO

(Photo taken by Storm Peak Laboratory founder, Randy Borys, flying above in his airplane.)

   High elevation, mountain-top atmospheric research facilities which are readily accessible under all weather conditions are limited in number world wide. Examples of mountaintop facilities include Jungfraujoch (Switzerland), Mauna Loa Observatory (Hawaii, USA), Elk Mountain Observatory (Wyoming, USA), Mount Washington Observatory (New Hampshire, USA), Mount Zeppelin (Svalbard, Norway), and Sonnblick (Austria). Sites which offer the ability to make time-extended observations of free tropospheric and in-cloud conditions which are not obtainable by airborne sampling platforms, provide valuable information with regard to cloud physics, cloud-aerosol chemistry, and related topics (Hallett, 1996). Remote scientific facilities which are to remain useful must be designed to meet the needs of diverse groups, and evolve over time to meet changing scientific objectives (Currie, 1996). A permanent research laboratory of this type allows study on a recurrent long-term basis, enabling a greater understanding and characterization of the meteorological processes than is available from temporally limited field projects at unfamiliar locations.

   A permanent mountain-top facility, Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL), was constructed during the summer of 1995 in the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Colorado (3200 m M.S.L.; 40.45 deg N, 106.73 deg W). Although SPL has been in existence in various forms for more than nineteen years, the new facility is the latest stage of an evolutionary process ofproviding a practical, easily accessible facility for researchers, teachers and students of all ages and abilities. A clear upwind fetch places the lab in an ideal location from which to conduct studies of the free troposphere.

   SPL is operated by the Desert Research Institute (DRI) Division of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS). DRI is a branch of the Nevada System of Higher Education and is committed to continuing research and education programs in the atmospheric sciences.

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