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HAHNVILLE – The St. Charles Parish Department of Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security has partnered with WeatherSTEM and installed a new, interactive weather station at the Emergency Operations Center. The system is rated for 185 mph winds and is backup solar-powered, and it provides data including but not limited to current conditions, forecasted conditions, lightning strikes and rainfall rates.

This enhanced weather station has robust capabilities and sensors to detect weather conditions at the St. Charles Parish EOC, and it connects to the nationwide network of WeatherSTEM stations, which allows for a significantly larger radius of detection. The system uploads data every second for the most up-to-date information, and the data is accessible from anywhere through the website.

Residents can also access the WeatherSTEM data and information at www.stcharles.weatherstem.com. Those interested in daily conditions and National Weather Service updates can also follow the St. Charles Parish EOC Weather Stem on Facebook (@St-Charles-Parish-EOC-Weatherstem-115315487826076) and Twitter (@StCharlesWxSTEM).

“This weather station will allow residents to see current weather conditions in real-time and allows the parish to use historical data in decision-making for future weather events,” said President Matthew Jewell. “We encourage our residents to utilize this asset and its education capabilities.”

WeatherSTEM also offers education for all through WeatherSTEM Scholar, which can be found at www.weatherstem.com/learn. This database of publicly available lessons covers climate and weather topics from A to Z while integrating statistics from the St. Charles Parish EOC database for those accessing the site from St. Charles Parish.

WeatherSTEM is the latest addition to St. Charles Parish’s push for meteorological data throughout the parish, and this system is the 20th system that has been installed.

Funds for the EOC WeatherSTEM were provided by the Department of Homeland Security – State Homeland Security Program (SHSP), which provides funding that supports the implementation of instrumentation dedicated to enhancing resilience against manmade and natural disaster threats.

For more information regarding St. Charles Parish, please visit our website at www.stcharlesparish.gov, Cox Channel 6, UVerse Channel 99, or follow us on Facebook (@stcharlesgov) and Instagram (@stcharlesgovernment).