UWinnipeg’s weather station. Photo supplied.
The University of Winnipeg has a new weather station.
The newly upgraded station located on the roof of Lockhart Hall is a Davis InstrumentsWireless Vantage Pro2™ Plus. This now allows for wireless readings, with a more stable internet connection, which is an upgrade from the previous station.
UWinnipeg’s weather station. Photo supplied.
Anyone can connect to the weather station via the web at UWinnipegWeather. What you see there depends on whether you’re connecting from a desktop, tablet, or phone. The site includes UWinnipeg’s resident climate change guru and geographer Dr. Danny Blair’s favourite weather and climate sites.
Unfortunately, the former UWinnipeg weather app is not compatible with the new station, but you can connect to the station at this link, where the data and graphs are updated every five minutes
The station records temperature, relative humidity, dewpoint, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, UV index, precipitation amounts, and rainfall rate. Measurements of snowfall are not accurate because of the wind.
The station build and installation was an interdisciplinary team effort. It was assembled by the Department of Geography’s map librarian Brad Russell and Blair. Once put together, the station was installed by Blair with the help of Dr. Doug Goltz, the Dean of Science.
“As a certified weather fanatic, of course I look at the site very often throughout the day, on my desktop or phone,” said Blair, who also keeps an archive of the data, which means he will have a minute-by-minute record of the weather. “That’s 1440 records every day, or over half a million records every year.”
UWinnipegWeather has a committed viewership and following. Blair occasionally gets calls from people who want the data recorded by the station, for research purposes, or to support insurance claims, but he notes the data is not ‘official,’ as it does not meet the standards of Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“Still, the data is very good, and certainly useful for many purposes,” said Blair, “including teaching, of course.”
