Columbia Weather Systems

Maria Telkes was a pioneer in solar energy technology. As Women’s History Month draws to a close, we have the spotlight on Hungarian-American biophysicist, scientist, and inventor Maria Telkes.  Nicknamed the “Sun Queen,” Maria had an early interest in solar energy. She completed her PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Budapest in 1924 and went on to serve 14 years on MIT’s Solar Energy Conversion Project, the beginning of a career spanning 50 years in innovative solar energy technology.  Notable inventions include: The Dover Sun House project, an experimental residence heated entirely with solar power. The solar oven, developed for third-world countries A solar still system that converted seawater into drinking water for use on military life boats during WWII Over the course of her career, Maria earned 20 patents and published more than 100 articles. She received numerous prestigious awards, and became the first recipient of the Society of Women

💧 From water conservation to wastewater treatment, weather and water are inextricably linked. Hats off to our customers around the globe who monitor meteorological parameters to increase operational efficiencies and empower correct and timely decisions. In honor of the day, we thought we'd re-share this infographic that covers "5 Reasons Smart Water Utilities Need a Weather Station."

With a nod to the seasonal transition from Winter to Spring, Mark Nelsen, Chief Meteorologist at KPTV, presented his Winter Weather Recap at the Oregon AMS meeting last night. Mark summed up the first few months with his comment: “We’re used to being let down here if you like big winter weather.” And then we experienced one of the coldest Februarys on record with multiple snow events. From the initial forecasted snow non-event that was over-hyped by the media and led to outages of kale in Portland-area grocery stores, Mark offered a lesson for forecasters and media: “In today’s social media world, we must be very careful with weather information.” Shout-out to Kyle Dittmer of Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission who nailed the forecast for number of snow events at the Annual Winter Weather conference last October! View Mark’s presentation here.

Mary Walton and her patented smoke-suppressing device. For Women's History Month, we’re happy to highlight a 19th-century American inventor named Mary Walton. Living in post-industrial revolution New York City, Mary recognized that smoke pouring out of the numerous factories and trains was a problem. Determined to reduce the amount of soot that covered the city and lingered in the air, she engineered a solution: a device that directed the smoke into water tanks to be absorbed and flushed through the sewer system.  CWS continues Mary’s vision for a cleaner, healthier environment. We offer professional air quality monitoring solutions combined with meteorological parameters that provide immediate, on-site data for analysis, compliance, and decision-making.    Click here for more on Mary Walton Orion AQM Plus Sensor

Cloud Base has been added to the suite of available measurements with the CWS monitoring options including WeatherMaster Software™ , the Weather MicroServer™ , and coming soon to the Weather Display Console . This feature was requested by our long-time customer CW Price, a supplier to the aviation industry based in South Africa. An important meteorological variable for aviation safety, cloud base can help determine whether pilots may use visual flight rules or instrument flight rules for take-off and landing. The height of the cloud base can be measured using a ceilometer, a pretty expensive piece of equipment. Alternatively, The US Federal Aviation Administration, and other agencies, suggest a calculated measurement to estimate the cloud base from surface measurements of air temperature and humidity by calculating the lifted condensation level. The calculated parameter of cloud base is available with any CWS weather station that measures air temperature and relative humidity.

This new video (about 3 minutes) gives an overview of CWS’s proprietary weather monitoring software with WeatherMaster 5.0™ PC software offering:  Real-time met sensor monitoring including calculated parameters Data logging, trend graphs, and reports Multi-station monitoring Alarm notification Automatic CAMEO/ALOHA interface for hazardous chemical plume modeling  Automatic interface to Weather Underground Click here for more information on WeatherMaster 5.0