Environmental monitoring in the park started decades ago and evolved from early efforts around the country to understand geography and weather. Thomas Jefferson began the Survey of the Coast in 1807, and the Weather Bureau — the precursor to the National Weather Service (NWS) — came into existence in 1870. Though mostly behind the scenes, environmental monitoring has become an ongoing and ordinary part of American life and a day-to-day occurrence in the Smokies.

“The site at the park headquarters actually predates the park by a bit,” said Derek Eisentrout of NWS, referring to the origins of the area’s oldest original weather observation point in Tennessee. “The site was started in 1921 and was located at an apple orchard.”

Eisentrout works in the NWS office at Morristown, Tennessee, and coordinates its Cooperative Observers Program, better known as COOP. Most of the park’s COOP stations, four of five, are situated in Tennessee. Besides the first one near headquarters, sites include Mount Le Conte (established in 1987), Newfound Gap (1991), and Cades Cove (1999). A COOP site in North Carolina at Oconaluftee (1958) is maintained by the Greenville-Spartanburg NWS forecasting office in South Carolina. Another site outside the park boundary in North Carolina collects data from the Deep Creek area.

COOP observations from the park include daily minimum and maximum temperatures, precipitation levels, snowfall totals, and snow depth. The information is collected by observers, who are among an estimated 8,700 at sites across the country and are mostly volunteers.

“From 1991 to 2011, the rangers from Oconaluftee would drive to Newfound Gap each morning, take the readings, and radio them to the dispatch office at Sugarlands Visitor Center, who would then relay the information to us,” said Eisentrout. The park eventually assigned staff at Newfound Gap the daily observation collection.

The legacy and coverage of the COOP program is a point of pride for NWS because observers perform an essential role in meteorology. As NWS puts it, COOP is “truly the Nation’s weather and climate observing network of, by, and for the people.”

“The data from COOP is the backbone of the nation's climatology,” Eisentrout said. “Folks are always interested in finding out what the ‘normal’ is for an area, as well as the ‘records.’ COOP provides that.”

Thanks in part to COOP data, park visitors can easily find “normals” for locations in and around the park from NOAA, which uses recorded observations to calculate 30-year averages. For instance, the normal maximum temperature at Mount Le Conte in February is 35.2 degrees and the normal minimum temperature is 19.5 degrees. As for record-breakers, Mount Le Conte holds the Tennessee records for 24-hour snowfall, 30 inches, and snow depth, 63 inches, both from a winter storm in March 1993.

Observational data help NWS verify forecasts, ground-truth radar, and contribute to assessing a region’s climate, which has a specific meaning in meteorology. Whereas weather is a snapshot of current conditions, climate is a longer record over a specific period. Climatology refers to aggregated climate data from a specific place and timeframe, such as the Smokies over 30 years, assessing what’s normal and also what’s variable.

Eisentrout and Christopher Horne, who oversees NWS monitoring on the North Carolina side of the park, ensure the park’s COOP data are submitted properly for use by Weather.gov forecasters, businesses, researchers, and others, including the public. Eisentrout and Horne, who have both been COOP operational program leads since 2011, schedule at least one visit a year to each site within their scope to check equipment and touch base with observers. For Horne, there’s not much to his trip on the North Carolina side, where part of the equipment stays in the employee breakroom at the Oconaluftee maintenance office; for Eisentrout, one site in Tennessee requires months of planning for his yearly visit.

“Our Mount Le Conte site can only be reached by hiking, as it is located at the lodge atop the mountain,” Eisentrout said. “I usually head up there in early September, so that means I need to start prepping for the trip in the summer. All the supplies I will need at the lodge are carried up beforehand by llamas that ferry supplies to the lodge. Since my tools and supplies travel on a space-available basis, I try to drop everything off by mid-July. I've been doing this annual hike and visit since 2000.”

Weather records for Mount Le Conte go beyond the 1950s, well before the site was officially folded into the COOP system in 1987. Such far-reaching weather records aren’t unusual, given that weather observing has been an age-old American pastime and a hobby for many historical figures, including Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin.

Besides supporting forecasters, observations help researchers flesh out answers to scientific and practical questions. NWS has analyzed historical temperature data gathered in the park over a 10-year period and compared it to conditions at the Knoxville airport to assess seasonal differences and temperature variations, which reveal interesting characteristics of each location. Why care? Because this information can inform impacts and outcomes from various weather phenomena.

“These data are invaluable in learning more about the floods, droughts, heat and cold waves affecting us all,” NWS states on its COOP web page.

Weather isn’t the only environmental variable monitored in the Smokies. Observations of wind, dewpoint, relative humidity, streamflow and air quality are routinely performed within park boundaries. More than 40 collection sites dot the park’s landscape.

It's worth mentioning that much of the information gathered in the park can be found online. Datasets, pictures, old handwritten records, and modern interpretive tools are available across the web. There’s so much that even the most focused researchers might find themselves going down a data rabbit hole. Similarly, knowledge sharing crosscuts a broad swath of organizations, including NOAA, interagency groups, and collaborative networks too numerous to name.

Though data about the park’s environment is plentiful, a personal connection also can be found — such as in the friendly morning blog post about weather from the winter caretaker at LeConte Lodge and from a quiet mountain view captured by an NWS webcam. Appealing to both novice and expert, an incredible treasure of environmental information — perhaps the park’s most-hidden gem — awaits the next visitor.

Jennifer Fulford is lead editor for the 29,000-member Smokies Life, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the scientific, historical, and interpretive activities of Great Smoky Mountains National Park by providing educational products and services such as this column. Learn more at SmokiesLife.org or reach the author at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..