Holy Cross Welcomes a New Orion Weather Station

ERF Company, Inc.

Our technical support specialist, Vincent, recently visited Holy Cross Catholic School in Portland to commission their new Orion™ Weather Station. He connected the Weather MicroServer to the school’s network, set up a cloud weather server account, and confirmed the data was coming in, all in under an hour.

Holy Cross has hosted a CWS weather station since 1999. Phil Volker, long-time Portland area broadcast meteorologist and founder of Extended Range Weather Forecasting Company, noticed a gap of met data in North Portland’s St. Johns area, so he worked with Holy Cross to put a station there. The school has used the weather station for educational purposes and for parents to be informed of conditions at the school.

Phil’s work with CWS goes back to 1978, when he helped the Hinds family develop the Capricorn system. Through ERF, Phil and CWS president Nader Khoury helped deploy nearly 150 stations around the West, many in places with no weather information available. Personally, Phil still has one of the original Capricorn Weather Stations, “I still have an original Cap 1 working at my office/home! Yes, it is nearly 50 years old and runs like a top!!”

With the new Orion Weather Station at Holy Cross, students, parents, staff, and parishioners can all check conditions at the school and church, and staff can view conditions from home before they head in. “The Orion station is state of the art” Phil said, “and allows all of us to see the data real time and to track those conditions.”

Thinking about a weather station for your school or campus? Let’s talk about what would work for you. Call or email 503-629-0887, info@columbiaweather.com.