With nine fire stations, the Waterford Regional Fire Department in Michigan covers Waterford Township, the city of Pontiac, and the city of Lake Angelus and serves approximately 142,000 residents over 58 square miles. We are pleased with our current AcuRite partnership, which provides us hyperlocal weather information.
We recently wrote about our first AcuRite Atlas™ install at fire station 2. Station 2 was chosen as the first location due to ease of install, with an existing rooftop mast formerly used by an antenna. This fire station also has a simpler network setup than some of the other locations. Our fire department IT infrastructure is more complex than most home setups, so we wanted to “work out the bugs” unique to our configuration with a more basic network first before deploying to more demanding locations. Since then, we have been busy installing additional units at other stations.
- The second weather station was installed at Station 1, which is also department headquarters. The Atlas was installed on the skirting around the rooftop heating, ventilating, and air conditioning units. Subsequently, we have installed a rooftop antenna support structure here. Eventually, we may consider moving the Atlas here to get the Atlas unit farther away from the building HVAC systems for improved accuracy on wind measurements and temperature readings.
We have also purchased some additional AcuRite sensors for use at this station. Room monitors with water sensors protect us from leaks and water damage. Temperature and humidity sensors are used to watch environmental conditions inside technical and mechanical areas. As our headquarters, this station houses additional infrastructure that is essential to the fire department’s functioning. It is imperative we prevent this sensitive technology from overheating and potentially disrupting our operations. These sensors are monitored using the AcuRite Access™ and My AcuRite app with push notifications and email alerts for dangerous weather conditions or environmental problems within our facilities.
- Station 4 is our smallest station and wedged within a residential neighborhood. Rooftop install of the weather station was not practical due to neighborhood trees causing inaccurate rainfall data and inexact wind measurements. A wooden pole used for a severe weather siren was determined to be the best place to mount the weather station at this location as it had ideal distance from other obstructions. We built a mount using electrical conduit and a bending tool.
- Station 3 is our busiest fire station, which makes it one of our most important weather station locations to capture reliable and accurate weather data in real time. We mounted the Atlas at this location on a pipe attached to a security fence. Here you can see the Atlas’s touchscreen display next to our station’s call status kiosk, obviously front and center to our daily operations!
All of our weather sensors are linked to the internet, and the data is available to the public on Weather Underground. Here’s our weather station network so far, listed on the map with the Weather Underground station IDs:
We hope to install additional weather stations at our other stations soon. Check back for progress updates!