REGIONA AIRPORT WEATHER STATION CLOSES DOORS; READINGS NOW AUTOMATED

Jeff Dahms' 10-year career as supervisor of the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport weather station ended Wednesday when the equipment was packed up and the doors closed.

Starting today, an Automated Surface Observing System will do his job while Dahms looks for a new one.

"It's been an interesting experience," Dahms said Wednesday, sitting in a nearly-bare office with a few cardboard boxes on the floor.

Dahms was there when two presidents, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, got their first impressions of Cape Girardeau at the airport. He also has seen several airport managers come and go.

With the new Automated Surface Observing System pilots can get up-to-the-minute weather reports from a computer-generated voice by tuning into a special radio frequency or over a phone line.

The system is faster and makes weather information more easily accessible, Dahms said.

"The truth is it's certainly an improvement," Dahms said. "I know it's better and more effective, but the thing you lose is the human contact."

The Cape Girardeau City Council voted last month to enter into an agreement with the National Weather Service that provides the city-operated control tower with computer access to automated weather readings.

There isn't enough traffic at the airport to warrant the FAA keeping the office open. The automated system doesn't require the office space that a manned office does, he said.

The federal government, and then private contractors, have provided weather observations at the airport for 37 years. The Federal Aviation Administration opened a flight service station at the airport June 2, 1960. The FAA closed the station in fall 1987. Since then weather observations have been handled by private firms under contracts with the FAA.

For the last 10 years the Cape Girardeau branch of Midwest Weather Inc., a St. Louis-based group, has been providing accurate weather information to pilots and other agencies. The office was in the airport terminal.

The weather observations were handled under a contract with the FAA. Dahms and five other weather observers staffed the Cape Girardeau office, providing hourly weather checks 24 hours a day at a cost of about $140,000 a year.

But five years ago airports began changing to a new automated system and Dahms knew it was only a matter of time until the Cape Girardeau airport did the same.

Dahms said the automated system will be more convenient to pilots because it will provide up-to-the-minute weather observations.

Weather readings from the Cape Girardeau airport also will be on the Internet, Dahms said.

The FAA has embraced the automated weather observations in a growing number of airports across the country.