Technology

Weather Innovations is the Canadian distributor of Adcon Telemetry equipment. WIN also manufactures tipping bucket rain gauges, and have developed a leaf wetness sensor that has proven to out-perform those available on the commercial market. Find out more about our in-house technological innovations here.

Equipment

Weather Innovations uses several different brands of weather station equipment to build the network. Some of these brands include Campbell Scientific, Adcon Telemetry and Davis Instruments. Data obtained from outside sources may be collected with additional brands to those previously listed. While each brand has strengths and weaknesses, proper maintenance and calibration of the sensors is the greatest factor affecting data quality. Owning and managing a diverse equipment set leads to many challenges in both the physical maintenance and in the collection, management and storage of raw data. Additionally, most weather stations can be fitted with third party sensors and often have specialized programming to address both the specific needs of the site where they are located, and the intended use of the resulting data. You can find out more about the equipment used and maintained by WIN here.

Partnerships

WIN has established partnerships with other agencies who manage weather station equipment and have an interest in weather data. Through these partnerships, WIN utilizes the existing weather monitoring infrastructure in Ontario as much as possible in the production of models and weather products. While extensive support for the weather mesonet can be achieved through partnering, the need to upgrade stations, improve data transmission systems, increase station density and centrally manage and mine the resulting data sets represents a huge undertaking for WIN. Infrastructure modernization is a key component to developing a world class agrometeorological network capable of simultaneously supporting new, high level research and delivering usable management tools.