On July 20th, Harvard became the first of the Ivies and the first university in New England to earn the coveted "StormReady" laurels from the National Weather Service!! A service was held in celebration of the award at 46 Blackstone South, the site of the University Operations Center.

Just what is that, exactly? No one cares! But there's reason to be impressed...the Harvard Gazette reports: 

the center has a ThorGuard Lightning Prediction System, installed just before Commencement. A roof-mounted sensor at 46 Blackstone South measures atmospheric electrostatic energy from 2.5 miles and 12 miles away. Data are fed through software at the Operations Center. The new system can predict a lightning strike with 85 percent accuracy — and give eight to 20 minutes of warning. 

In the event of severe weather, University Operations has a number of ways of getting the word out, including a campus two-way radio system (500 radios), opt-in broadcast e-mail notifications, text paging (1,000-plus recipients), a pager data base, and emergency Web site capabilities.

On the phone, the automated Harvard University Emergency Notification System (HUENS) can call 100 people every five minutes, and has more than 800 administrators in its database.

What elaborate money-wasting scheme will our obscenely wealthy university come up with next??

In the meantime, not a storm in sight...