A very special place for a weather station is located 1571 meters above the sea level. The weather station equipped with Lufft sensors is installed directly at the Rotenflue mountain ski station in the middle of the beautiful Swiss Mythen Region. Our colleague Olav Schroeder was on site for the installation and reports of the special location at first hand in the following blog post…

When we met for the first location inspection of a planned new weather station in December last year, the sun hasn’t risen yet and I wasn’t aware of what was lying ahead. We had already discussed, which kind of sensors to install, but I didn’t expect the fantastic view of the site. After a short welcome, we took the not yet officially opened cable car driving steeply out of the clouds up to the mountain station at the so-called “Gipfelstubli” (lounge on the mountain peak). There we enjoyed the magnificent view of the sunrise and the Swiss mountains landscape around the Lake Lucerne and Lauerz  – and this all during working hours!

Thanks to the good planning and coordination of all important construction details, we were able to assemble the weather station and put it into operation quickly, even before the first major snowfall took place.

Meanwhile, the system has been in operation for almost one year. If you ever have the chance to get there, I recommend you to make a trip to the Rotenflue cable car. You will be received by an information screen at the ticket office displaying the weather data of the Lufft weather sensors and realtime images of the panoramic camera. This hopefully tunes you in on the breathtaking views – provided that the weather conditions are good.

Technically, we’ve realized the construction with the help of the Lufft I-Box. This is the first environmental application of the small blue box. It is connected to the WS301 all-in-one weather sensor communication with the UMB protocol. In order to enable the communication integration, we have used the existing network. By means of the Lufft I-Box, we can access it remotely and install updates. In addition, a meteorologist takes care of the detailed analysis of the supplied measurement values. The already mentioned display shows the data at the ticket office of the base station via TFT monitor.

I will always remember this special day at Rotenflue and hope for many more stations to install at such nice locations. Many thanks to all participants, who made it possible.

Please feel free to take a look at the related website of the cable car at www.Mythenregion.ch. There you can even see the Lufft station in real time.

Further links:

• Lufft I-Box Serial – the new communication solution for environmental applications
• WS301 all-in-one weather sensor
• Ventus-UMB wind sensor
• R2s-UMB precipitation sensor
• Rotenflue station round shot
• MICKS homepage – the experts for meteorological applications in the transport sector
  

About the author: My name is Olav Schröder and I have worked for MICKS from 1999 on. MICKS is a subsidiary of Lufft an takes care of weather station projects. Since 2007 I’m the contact person for system solutions, including planning, installation and maintenance of weather observation projects.