By Olivia Condous
The Moorabool Shire has received a new automated weather stations, which will help to improve firefighter and community safety.
Ballan has a new permanent weather station called a Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS), units that are used globally in fire management.
The Country Fire Authority (CFA) announced ten new stations to be located across Victoria, provided by $680,000 in funding from the state government.
The unit will help to manage fire incidents and planned burns with hyper-local weather data, fire predictions and community warnings.
The station will be able to transmit data via satellite to the Bureau of Meteorology, which is accessible to the CFA as well as the general public.
The unit can record temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, rain, solar radiation and more.
Ballan CFA captain Ben Hatfield said the data from the new weather station would “absolutely” provide helpful insights during fire season.
“In terms of accurate data and forecasting, our closest points were previously in Ballarat, so having something here local in Ballan helps us to see better what’s going on,” he said.
“Data on wind changes, humidity, those inputs will feed into our burn plans pre-season and post-season, as well as monitoring the weather during fire season.”
CFA Acting Chief Officer Garry Cook said the additional weather intelligence will be invaluable to firefighters for fire response and preparation.
“Fire is a true force of nature and its behaviour can change in an instant, putting lives and property at risk,” Mr Cook said.
“Accurate, localised and up-to-the-minute weather information on a fireground is critical to providing an effective emergency response.”
Mr Cook said the new stations will help firefighters understand fire behaviour during a fire incident, as well as better measure conditions leading up to a planned burn event.
“They have a huge potential to improve our planning and responses, thereby improving firefighter and community safety as well.”
