Tower operators at the Beaver County Airport judge the weather by a method akin to those joke rocks with signs saying, "If the rock is wet, it's raining; if the rock is white on top, it's snowing ..."

"We take weather observations right now with the trained human eye," tower manager Wayne Resetar said.

And while that is actually far more accurate than joke rocks -- tower operators take classes and earn certification in observing weather -- there is a human factor that renders it inexact.

"If we're looking at the visibility and calling it a mile, we as human beings might be off a little bit," Mr. Resetar said.

That will change soon. The airport authority recently learned that it was getting a federal grant to buy an Automated Weather Observation Station, which has instruments to make exact weather measurements and the capacity to broadcast them over the radio and post them on the Internet.

"If someone's flying up from Florida and wants to know the weather conditions here, they can get them," Mr. Resetar said. And those measurements will be exact.

The airport authority also got a grant to put in a new storm water management system. Authority director Beth LaValle said the current system dates back to the airport's construction in the 1950s.

The county and the state Bureau of Aviation are putting up $6,250 each toward the storm water system, with $237,500 coming from the Federal Aviation Administration. The weather station will come via $5,000 each from the county and state and $195,000 from the FAA.

The weather system will be a boon to the Community College of Beaver County's aviation program, which uses the airport as a training ground. Mr. Resetar, who teaches aviation for the college, said students would be trained on it, which would be great experience when seeking jobs at airports that have them.

They will also still be trained in observation, though. "If something breaks, or the system just goes down for maintenance, they still need to track the weather," he said. "The human eye is still going to be very important."

The storm water system, meanwhile, in some ways signals the end of any effort toward building a new county airport.

Several years ago the county looked into selling the land where the airport sits -- situated in thriving Chippewa, it would be valuable -- and building an expansive replacement near the Route 60-turnpike interchange in the county's northern tier. The interchange has long been looked at as a potential business hot spot thanks to the highways.

Ms. LaValle said, though, that the hilly terrain made it cost-prohibitive and extra capacity at the Pittsburgh airport brought the need for a larger Beaver County Airport into question.

"We're staying where we are, and will improve what we have," she said.