The fire station on Carson Road will soon have weather-monitoring equipment installed.
The weather station will be in addition to one that sits atop Grand Forks City Hall, explained Coun. Chris Moslin after a recent environment committee meeting.
“As a result of the dispersion modeling study, the scientists who put that study together recommended that another station be put west of the city,” Moslin said.
Moslin said that originally, a weather station and a webcam were going to be set up atop Observation Mountain but after the recommendation, the environment
committee decided to put the station at the fire hall.
He estimated that the weather station will be set up sometime in the summer and said that the Ministry of Environment (MOE) will offer assistance.
“(The Carson Road) location was handled by the city’s IT department as well as the MOE’s meteorological experts,” said the city councillor and chair of the environment committee.
“The weather station will be placed under the guidance of the MOE. The MOE technician will come out and say, ‘Put it there.’ It’ll probably in the corner of the parking lot on top of a pole.”
Moslin said that the ministry doesn’t like the equipment on top of roofs because of such factors as turbulence and wind change and said that it likes it in an independent location, like a pole.
“As soon as it’s in place and hopefully accredited, we might start seeing Grand Forks on the weather news,” Moslin said, adding that Grand Forks’ information currently is taken from readings from Castlegar.
He said that the webcam will still go up on Observation Mountain and was set up last Friday.
“That (webcam) is an important device for both air quality and tourism. Air quality-wise that will be able to indicate, in daylight hours, the ceilings or the weather conditions above the city and it will also probably note the Roxul stack or any source of any emissions,” Moslin said.
If there is even a building construction fire, it will show up on the webcam but added that the camera will not be used to spy on people.
“You’re barely going to be able to see anybody, you’re a long ways from everybody when you’re up there but you do get a beautiful view of the whole valley,” he said.
“I don’t think people really have to worry.”