Four of the City of Vicksburg’s planned series of six new wireless real-time Weather Watchers are installed, ready to serve climate trackers with abundant details.

Click here to visit Weather Underground

The Internet-based system can also be helpful in the event of a hazardous materials emergency because they provide wind information.

Base stations are at the Water Treatment Plant at the Port of Vicksburg, at Halls Ferry Park, the Waste Water Treatment Plant on Rifle Range Road and Vicksburg Municipal Airport on U.S. 61 South, said Bill Ford, information systems specialist for the city.

“I’m pretty sure the next one will be at Cedar Hill Cemetery off Lovers Lane,” said Ford. “We’re working out the details on the sixth site.”

He said each site throughout the city was chosen according to Internet access, a level of security that will deter vandalism and weather exposure.

Each solar-powered station measures wind speed, rainfall, temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind direction and calculates dew point and heat index.In case of extended periods of little sunlight, each station is equipped with a battery backup — eight hours of sunlight produces three to four days of power, Ford said.

Before the devices were installed in Vicksburg, the Vicksburg-Tallulah Regional Airport in Mound, La., was the closest wired monitoring site in the area — providing hour-old data, according to Ford.The new weather stations upload new readings automatically to the Web site, Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com) every 30 seconds for public viewing, he said.Residents can search area readings by clicking on the “Vicksburg” link.

“You’ll notice those changing pretty rapidly. When it updates, sometimes you can actually see the wind direction (data) change,” said Ford.

The stations also upload data to the Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) weather service and to the city’s Web site, www.vicksburg.org, he said.The city approved $4,182.28 in January for the stations, but Ford said total costs are approaching $5,000 due to installation, which began in March.

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Contact Tish Butts at tbutts@vicksburgpost.com