Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Jefferson County may soon be getting an updated and enhanced WeatherSTEM, a miniature weather station that measures temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, wind speed and other atmospheric-related information by the minute.
In Jefferson County, WeatherSTEM units are located on the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) at the industrial park and at Jefferson County K-12 and Aucilla Christian Academy.
Will Oberschlake, with WeatherSTEM Inc., told the Jefferson County Commission on Thursday evening, March 2, that since the WeatherSTEM station was installed at the EOC about 2017, the systems had undergone numerous upgrades. His company, he said, was currently engaged in a process of trying to update all the old sites like the one here to keep them on the platform.
Among the system’s new features, Oberschlake said, were high-resolution weather cameras that were capable of live streaming, as well as issuing weather health and safety alerts, lighting detection notifications and high heat monitoring advisories in real time.
His company, he said, was conducting a hometown weather initiative that entailed providing small cities and counties across north Florida, Georgia and Alabama with weather information devices to better protect them against weather-related events. Such devices, he said, recorded actual wind speeds by the minute and could help mitigate insurance costs.
He cited a community in Grady County, Ga., where his company had recently installed a new WeatherSTEM unit. The reason for the installation, he said, was that Hurricane Michael in 2018 had damaged the houses of more than 200 people, who had been unable to collect insurance coverage because it had been determined that the storm winds had not exceeded 39 mph, he said.
Yet a hobby weather station in the area, he said, had reported sustained winds of 78 mph. If the community had then had a WeatherSTEM station, the device would have recorded accurate and reliable information about the wind speed that could have been used as verification, he said.
“So it can help with insurance mitigation and everything else,” Oberschlake said.
WeatherSTEM, he said, protected communities by providing real-time weather monitoring that allowed them to better prepare, avert disaster and safeguard their assets. The units also, he said, were solar powered and cellular, so that they wouldn’t stop just because power or the Internet went down. What’s more, they were designed to withstand Category five hurricane force winds, he said.
Others of the WeatherSTEM features that Oberschlake cited included permanently archived and easily viewable data, the latest tropical weather information relative to a particular location, and automatic weather updates and bulletins going to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.
He proposed updating the county’s WeatherSTEM station and possibly relocating it to the downtown area, positioning it so that it would transmit a view of the iconic county courthouse.
“That would be something for the entire community to rally around,” he said of the historic building.
He suggested that the county might also want to approach the Florida Department of Emergency Management, which has a grant program that will fund new weather stations and six years of their maintenance.
“That way, you can get weather coverage across your county, as other counties are doing,” Oberschlake said.
He said the cost of the update was currently $1,800, with an additional $1,000 annually for maintenance, which covered everything but vandalism. The way the matter was left, Oberschlake is to return with a formal proposal for the board’s consideration.
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