Flagler County has two new hurricane wind rated weather-monitoring stations in Haw Creek and Rima Ridge thanks to coordination between Emergency Management and WeatherSTEM through grants provided by the State of Florida.
“The result of this partnership is that we now have WeatherSTEM monitoring stations in all areas of Flagler County,” said Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord. “They provide the necessary information about wind speed and other weather conditions that factor into our critical decision making when adverse weather or wildfire conditions are threatening.”
The new stations are located at the Haw Creek Community Center on County Road 304, and at the Flagler County Fire Rescue Station 81, also known as the Rima Ridge Volunteer Fire Station, in the southern reaches of the county. The Flagler County network has stations at the Hammock Dunes Bridge, Marineland, and the Hidden Trails Community Center, as well as three sponsored by Flagler Schools and located at Belle Terre Elementary, Buddy Taylor Middle School, and Flagler Palm Coast High School.
WeatherSTEM will allow Emergency Management to monitor live, local weather conditions in Flagler County, such as lightning alerts, barometric readings, rainfall rates, and temperature readings in addition to wind speed. It will also provide video of approaching weather systems.
“This network assists us with monitoring severe weather conditions along with a team of National Weather Service trained Skywarn storm spotters, some of whom help monitor these stations during severe weather,” Lord said. “The weather stations also archive data which is searchable.”
Weather information from all eight WeatherSTEM stations is available by visiting www.FlaglerCounty.gov/emergency and selecting local weather from the menu.
Jimbo99 says
Just what we need, another waste of taxpayer money for a couple of weather stations. How does this improve the slam dunk that is the weather forecast already, that we needed 2 more stations ? Pretty much Flagler County is predominantly gentle E-SE winds, you don’t need a high tech weather station to figure this out. Storms, they already know about those that come from the SW or NE, & haven’t had a hurricane here since 2017. Not like getting more data points of the same data they’re getting from existing locations is going to make the storm(s) any less preventable or even predictable. Just me, but it’s going to approximate to the same data a few miles apart isn’t going to be appreciably different unless it’s a tornado or water spout that results in touching down.