The Tribune

THE Atlantis Resort has completed an upgrade and reactivation exercise of an existing but obsolete weather station on Paradise Island in an effort to further improve the everyday experience for both guests and staff.

Located in the PITDA building at the eastern end of the island, the old apparatus monitored little more than rain and wind levels.

With the upgrade, it now becomes a full authentic barometric station, which monitors not only rain and wind, but also lightning, barometric pressure, temperature, humidity, and solar radiation among other things.

“Having accurate weather data here at the resort, particularly during our disaster management periods or hurricanes, is critical and vital,” said Kevan Dean, Atlantis director of emergency preparedness.

Mr Dean said that while his team is able to access weather data from a variety of sources – both international via the internet and local through the Bahamas Meteorological Office – interpretation of that data is sometimes difficult.

“Through this new weather station, information retrieved is being sent back via satellite to the MET office which also reports that back to the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“They will see the data every hour, but we’ll have data right down to the minute,” he said.

“Through discussions, we realised that this project had a lot of value, not only from our facility’s engineering perspective, but also from that of the various outdoor areas, like Marine Water Park Operations and the Golf Course and Golf Maintenance teams.

“We can now provide those areas with data in real time for lightning activity versus third party information.”

A 2013 CAPEX project, the new weather station is a collaborative effort with installation assistance provided by the Bahamas Met Office, Commonwealth Electric, Atlantis’ IT department and its sub-contractors.

The equipment was supplied by the Finland-based Vaisala Inc and the Bahamas MET Office has agreed to maintain the hardware side of the system.

According to Mr Dean, it took a little less than a week to “get the system alive and online,” at a cost of roughly $40,000.