#61 - Mobile Weather Station Addition to EmComms Setup
I have decided to add a Vantage Vue Wireless Weather Station by Davis to my EmComms equipment. With this new weather station I will be able to monitor temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, dew point and rainfall onsite at my EmComms station.
It is a portable solar powered unit with lithium battery backup that can be deployed and ready to go in minutes and transmits the sensor readings wirelessly up to 1,000 feet away to the console using a similar channel hopping type system as my Viper vehicle alarm.
I am an Official Storm Spotter (#1094) with Skywarn, a part of the National Weather Service (NWS), which is a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With this system I will also able to set up a portable weather station onsite anywhere on the island within minutes to assist the meteorologists with storm tracking across the island.
I will be able to deploy the weather station either mounted on a weighted antenna tripod, or mounted to the roof rack of my communications van giving me options in various deployments.
Besides being used for Skywarn incidents and storm tracking, what would be advantages of having a portable weather station onsite at a possible disaster scene?
I can think of one right away from an incident that I worked on myself back on the mainland several years ago outside of Walnut Ridge, Arkansas when a freight train pulling multiple liquid petroleum gas (propane) tankers derailed and caught fire.
The closest National Weather Service forecast office that we could get updates from was over 130 miles away in Little Rock, Arkansas. If we would have had access to a portable weather station onsite it would have helped us with anticipating local wind fluctuations which affected evacuation zones and how we approached the response to the incident.
Hazardous materials incidents are one situation where having access to accurate up to the second onsite weather information can be critical. but there are other ways that having a portable weather station onsite can be helpful in other ways.
Over the next few weeks I will be testing the new portable system out and seeing any limitations it may have, but from what I have read online in the reviews of this model it seems to be a very accurate and well built product.
Once I get a chance to test the system out for a while I will do a full review of the Vantage Vue Wireless Weather Station.
Until next time,
Aloha & 73
