The government weather forecast in La Crosse chose a sunny and mild day to welcome a large crowd of visitors to an open house on Saturday.

The National Weather Service office in La Crosse near Grandad Bluff had not offered public tours since before COVID—the last open house was in 2016.

The tours coincided with a rare cold record in La Crosse. Saturday’s low of 40 degrees was the lowest recorded in La Crosse since Sept. 7 – last seen in the 1980s. It was the first time in exactly 1,300 days, or about three years, that the city had set a cold record.

The event featured modern technology used by meteorologists to predict and track weather patterns across the region, including 50 computer screens.

NWS meteorologist Todd Shea said visitors may have expected the office to look different before the tour.

“They’ve probably imagined wall-sized screens, everything being dark and stuff,” Shea said. “When they come to the open house, they’ll have the opportunity to see a kind of demonstration of our workspaces and learn a little bit more about what we do on a day-to-day basis.”

Shea added that her building has newer equipment and larger video screens than the last open house.

He noted that one purpose of the event was to teach people “how we deal with big winter storms and heavy snowfalls or the likelihood of tornadoes, and how we can maybe phrase it a little differently and more precisely when the storms come.”

Local authorities also brought trucks and other heavy equipment to the weather station to display during the open day.