I started looking for one or two volunteer programs in the Co. Louth area, and came across a few interesting ones - and I’ve started work on one in particular that I’m really liking.

Irish Weather Rescue, part of the Irish national weather service Met Éireann, is using volunteers to transcribe weather data - specifically daily rain totals - from the 1920’s. They have scanned copies of the yearly rainfall logs for each weather station location. After signing on as a volunteer and completing some basic training, you use their web app to view the hand-written log pages and transcribe the daily rainfall entries for each month into their system, along with the monthly total.

I’ve gotten a rhythm going, and as of this morning I’ve completed 35 monthly entries. Each month takes about four minutes start to finish - you use a line drawing tool to draw a border around the month you’re working on, then enter the data for days 1-10, 11-20, and 21 to the end of the month, and finally the written total for the month. There’s a couple of process entries to log if there were corrections shown on the page, and any other special handling you did. Most of the entries are clearly legible, but the app has zoom buttons if an entry isn’t quite clear enough.

It’s an easy and enjoyable way to spend a half-hour doing something productive. I’m currently doing a block of pages for the weather station at the Dundalk Town Hall, shown here.