Weather together

RAIN, hail or shine, the City of Greater Geelong is searching for community members who would like to join a localised project to improve the accuracy of local weather data.

The Weather Together project invites weather enthusiasts to host a weather sensor in their backyard or workplace to increase the data-collection across the municipality and enhance the information on the city’s temperature and humidity levels.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) currently has two weather observation stations – one at Avalon and one at the Geelong Racecourse.

The new network will enable the city, BOM and weather-sensitive industries including agriculture and aviation, to study real-time variations in weather at the hyper-local level.

A group of community members who participated in ‘Internet of Things Kickstarter’ during Geelong Design Week 2021 will be the first to collect weather data.

The data will be available on the open data platform, Geelong Data Exchange, making it easy for anyone to access and analyse.

Geelong mayor Stephanie Asher said the data would also assist the city with planning decisions.

“Our weather can be unpredictable so every piece of information we, as a community, collect from Anakie to Ocean Grove will be helpful,” Cr Asher said.

“This Smart City project will help us to better understand and respond to extreme weather events and environmental issues, and make more informed decisions about how we manage heat in the city.

“The weather fascinates many of us, so if you’re a budding Jane Bunn or you’d just like to participate in an interesting citizen science project, we encourage you to get involved.”

Weather Together is a community-wide effort and anyone interested in participating can visit Greater Geelong’s Smart City page or the Weather Together data platform.