NORWICH – Providing up-to-the-minute, local weather information is one of the main objectives for the Norwich and Chenango County Emergency Management Offices, and with the installation of a new weather station, the information will now be available at the push of a button.
The Emergency Management offices recently installed a new Davis Weather Station, replacing an older system that was located on the tower at the Norwich Police Station. According to A. Wesley Jones, the City of Norwich Emergency Management officer, the old weather station had been in operation for years, but the system had some disadvantages. “We had the old system for a while, but there was no way to share information,” said Jones. “So for our benefit and for the benefit of the public, a new one was purchased, which allows us to share the information.”
Jones explained with the old system, the only way to access weather information was by logging onto a computer at the location of the weather station. The information was not available from other areas in the county. “One of our biggest objectives is to inform the public so they can make decisions to protect themselves, so they are better informed to make decisions,” Jones said.
The new weather station provides live data, taken from the station, located at the joint Emergency Operations Center on East Main Street in Norwich. The information is uploaded to the web site, Weather Underground, every two seconds. The information can be accessed by visiting the web site, www.wunderground.com/swf/Rapid_Fire.swf?units=both&station=KNYNORWI4.
Jones explained that before this information was available, most local residents got weather information from the National Weather Service, with the nearest office in Binghamton. The new weather station will give more accurate details on local conditions, such as temperature, dew point, humidity, pressure and total rainfall. In addition, by next winter a new feature will be installed, allowing the weather station to determine how much precipitation is falling as rain and how much is falling as snow.
“The rain fall info is the biggest factor. We can monitor the rain fall and determine if it will create a flood situation,” Jones said. “Getting this weather station was one of our goals, along with the weather alerts. We’re trying to do anything we can to give people the most amount of information, and to do it in an automated fashion.”
For over a year, the Norwich Emergency Management web site has been offering automated weather alerts that can be automatically sent to an e-mail account. For more information about the weather alerts or the new weather station, visit the Norwich Emergency Management web site at www.norwichnewyork.net/emergency.