Weather Station Returns to Historic Pilot House Roof
Staff and volunteers at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle in Detroit recently completed the planned expansion of the popular Detroit River Watch Webcam project. Based on requests for live weather data, the Dossin Museum, purchased and installed the new equipment.

Live weather data is now collected and shared from the Museum. In January 2004 staff and volunteers mounted a Davis Vantage Pro wireless weather station on the pilothouse of the William Clay Ford, returning weather instruments to the same location they were found when the William Clay Ford was an operational freighter.

This location is ideal for collection weather data and the sensors actually hang over the Detroit River.

Weather conditions have always been important to sailors, for their very lives depended on a knowledge of what was to come. A century ago the US Weather Bureau Station at Detroit provided weather through a system of signals that were displayed at three sites along the riverfront. The first was from a steel tower and flagstaff on the roof of the Union Trust Building which was also the headquarters of the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company. Besides this lighted flagstaff at the northeast corner of Griswold and Congress Street, there was a flag at Smith's Coal Dock on the Detroit River, and the U S Mail Boat displayed flags to advise the passing vessels of weather conditions.
 

The expansion was funded by a grant from Marine Publishing Co., the publisher of Know Your Ships.

The weather station provides real time conditions to visitors of the Detroit Historical Society website. The captured data is uploaded to the Internet using a computer running Virtual Weather Station and is included on the Detroit River Watch Webcam pages. Beyond sharing the information to Webcam visitors, the data collected at the museum is also shared across a regional network of weather observation stations.

   ▪ Detailed Weather Conditions
   ▪ Daily Tabular Data