Friday, September 26th, 2008
When my telephone started ringing on Monday morning after Hurricane Ike hit Houston, I have to admit I was not really surprised…at first. I knew Ike had passed directly over Houston, and we had a new AWOS installation there on a rooftop helipad at Memorial Hermann Hospital supporting Life Flight operations. Life Flight had recently become our latest RSINet NADIN delivery customer. In the RSI office, there is a small program constantly monitoring all RSINet sites via the National Weather Service Telecommunication Gateway. If a site goes down, a text message is sent to me and another technician. We don’t get many texts from the system and I had not gotten one overnight, so I knew the KMCJ system was still up.  What I DIDN’T know until I started getting phone calls from the NWS and other Houston area colleagues was that the KMCJ AWOS with RSINet was the ONLY site in the area to have weathered the storm uninterrupted. I did some checking and verified that was indeed the case. With backup power to the AWOS and the robust RSINet network, data continued flowing when satellite and telephone communications were either out or jammed.  Here’s some sample comments:
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“I want to write and thank you for all the help in getting the AWOS installed at our hospital helipad. As you know we received certification only a month before Hurricane Ike hit the area.
We were able to use the information provided by the system to launch our helicopters out of here at the last possible moment prior to the hurricane and we were the ONLY weather reporting system operating during and after the storm. Because the system was still reporting after the storm, search and rescue aircraft had data to base their operations on and we were able to use the data to recover our aircraft at the first opportunity.
As a direct result of the recommendation to have our data sent out to NADIN we were apparently able to provide the NWS with storm data as it approached and passed our area. We were the only AWOS system that was up and recording data during the storm from beginning to end.
Our hospital system and many others were very grateful to get the weather information we provided during this demanding time.”
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Stephen Scroggs
Chief Pilot
Life Flight
Memorial Hermann TMC
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“Congrats on a robust AWOS communications system that held up better during hurricane Ike than some of the federally owned ASOS/AWOS systems!! Even though admittedly it is located at KMCJ/Hermann Hospital in Houston, where there was back up power sources, it is one of the few Houston weather observations that we have a complete and uninterrupted history of observations during the event. That’s what important!!”
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Troy Kimmel, Jr.
Senior lecturer and Manager,
Weather and Climate Resource Center
Department of Geography and the Environment.
University of Texas at Austin
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We are proud of RSINet and happy we could make a difference!
Posted in News | Comments Off on What customers and weather pros are saying about RSINet!
Monday, September 15th, 2008
In the early morning hours of September 13th, Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas gulf coast. The city of Houston suffered a direct hit from Ike. Near the rooftop helipad of  Memorial Hermann hospital (KMCJ) in the heart of Houston sits an All-Weather Inc. Automated Weather Observation system installed by RSI and equipped with the RSINet data delivery service. According to National Weather Service personnel and data records, The KMCJ AWOS and RSINet datalink was the only Houston area AWOS or ASOS to provide uninterrupted weather data to the NWS for the entire storm event. In a city where satellite dishes were blown away and phone lines were out, the RSINet technology weathered the storm.  Here is a portion of the data transmitted by RSINet at the height of the storm:
KMCJ 130855Z AUTO 32042G64KT M1/4SM OVC001 23/23 A2845 RMK AO1 P0107
KMCJ 130835Z AUTO 33049G77KT 1/4SM OVC001 24/24 A2850 RMK AO1 P0060
KMCJ 130815Z AUTO 34049G73KT 1/4SM OVC001 24/24 A2856 RMK AO1 P0024
KMCJ 130755Z AUTO 35048G73KT 1/4SM BKN001 OVC006 23/23 A2864 RMK AO1 P0044
KMCJ 130735Z AUTO 35049G73KT 1/4SM BKN001 OVC006 23/23 A2868 RMK AO1 P0025
KMCJ 130715Z AUTO 35046G69KT 1/2SM BKN002 OVC009 24/23 A2877 RMK AO1 P0007
KMCJ 130655Z AUTO 36045G69KT 3/4SM BKN001 OVC009 24/24 A2884 RMK AO1 P0021
Posted in News | Comments Off on RSINet technology delivers in Hurricane Ike
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