Columbia Weather Systems

“ I maging the world with lidar, photography, and aerial cinema” is the theme for GEO1 . From a hangar located near Los Angeles, Calif., they offer services including lidar, high resolution imaging, and geo-spatial analysis. Orion Weather Station and Solar Radiation Sensor CEO Ron Chapple recently expressed appreciation for the free firmware upgrade to their Weather MicroServer, and sent a couple nice photos of their Orion Weather Station installation which includes a separate solar radiation sensor. “The station has worked perfectly since installation,” he noted. He added that their weather station “enhances our business” in these three ways: 1. Location-specific weather data is provided for pilots landing helicopters at their hangar. 2. Freely sharing weather data enables good business relationships with both clients and competitors.   3. The weather data is integrated into deliverables when acquiring engineering-grade lidar within 15 miles of their facility on electric util...

DP World-Vancouver is located in the inner harbor of downtown Vancouver, BC, and is a key gateway port for the Trans-Pacific Trades between Asia and the Pacific Northwest. In addition to serving the local market, they provide direct daily intermodal rail connection to Eastern Canada and the US Midwest markets. DP World deploys an Orion Wind-Only Weather Station with Weather MicroServer for SNMP interface. They requested one-minute average and one-minute minimum sustained wind speed measurements to comply with an alarm requirement for a union-operated container terminal. We were able to accommodate their request and added this custom, calculated parameter to the standard reporting measurements. The Orion Wind-Only Weather Station is a cost-effective ultrasonic option for wind speed and direction requirements, particularly those with specialized measurement or calculation specifications. It is compatible with any CWS weather monitoring option including Weather MicroServer , We...

Portland area emergency managers toured an Air National Guard mobile emergency operations center (MEOC) outfitted with an Orion Weather Station at a recent meeting. The trailer can become a command-and-control hub and dispatch to any state for on-scene communications and disaster response. Close-up of the Vehicle-Mount Orion Inside the MEOC (See Weather Display on left wall) Gary was in attendance and says the MEOC “includes all kinds of communications equipment, many computers, and an Orion Weather Station connected to the  Weather Display  inside. It is a pretty impressive piece of equipment.”

Last week Vincent and Nader had an unusual opportunity to participate in the commissioning of a new Orion Weather Station for the Ground Run-up Enclosure (GRE) at the Portland International Airport. The GRE purpose is to reduce environmental noise during aircraft engine testing. Operation is impacted by weather parameters -- primarily wind and temperature. The Port of Portland operates the facility and chose an Orion™ Weather Station with Weather MicroServer to replace their old system. Vincent and Nader inspected the installation and verified the data stream. In addition to everything working smoothly as expected, a highlight of the excursion was observing a couple of military planes taking off close by. FULL STORY HERE

Last week we received a call from Air Liquide, an industrial gas production company, for help connecting their Orio­n Weather Station™ to Weather Underground® in anticipation of Hurricane Harvey. All CWS weather stations can feed data automatically from WeatherMaster ™ software or the Weather MicroServer ™ to Weather Underground, where the information is readily available online. Click Here for instructions on how to connect your CWS weather station to Weather Underground. Graph of Air Liquide’s data from Weather Underground for Sunday, August 27. Note significantly high winds between 3:30 and 10:00 p.m. (gusts up to 42 mph) with lowered air pressure.