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Monitoring in the area consists of wind speed, wind direction and temperature, and is extremely useful for fire management, dune stabilisation studies and the forestry industry. Recent fires in the Western Cape are an example of the benefit these data can be to Municipalities and Nature Conservation Bodies. Some interesting trends emerged from the data collected during the monitoring period from 1 March 1999 to 29 February 2001.
They include:
- Months which experienced the higher wind speeds were August, September and November 1999.
- Calmer wind conditions were experienced in April and May 1999.
- High wind speeds (near gale force) were recorded during April and September 1999.
- Highest 1-minute gust wind speed was recorded on 17 September 1999 (25,09 m/s).
- Maximum temperature of 37°C was recorded on 27 December 1999 and the lowest temperature of 3,6° C was recorded on 19 July 1999.
- The 12- month average temperature was 18,2°C.
In terms of the long-term 10-year data, the average wind speed for all four seasons, was less for the 12-month monitoring period from 1 March 1999 to 29 February 2000.
The lowest temperature recorded over the 10-year period (2,4° C) was on July 1996. The highest temperature (37,8° C) recorded over the same period was on 23 October 1998.
The fully automatic weather station is capable of monitoring other meteorological parameters such as solar radiation, relative humidity, rainfall and barometric pressure. It is also possible to recover data directly on a real-time basis from the data logger using modems or GSM cell-modem techniques.
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