Mike Walker, fire protection forester with the Division of Forestry and Wildlife, holds a full radiation sensor while working on a remote automatic weather station in Lahaina on Sept. 11. The sensor measures how much sunlight is coming through the station, which helps the state collect data on weather conditions that could impact fires. Photo courtesy DLNR

The Maui News

Remote automatic weather stations have been installed recently in Lahaina in areas with invasive grasses that can be vulnerable to wildfires, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources said.

The two stations in Lahaina and one above Maalaea will allow the DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife to collect data to predict fire behavior and monitor fire-stoking fuels. The stations, which are solar powered and completely automated, record data on precipitation, wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, fuel moisture and solar radiation for rangers and firefighters.

Data is collected hourly and transmitted to a satellite, which then sends it to a computer at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. It’s helpful for wildland fire management and rating fire danger.

“Not only do the fire departments look at the data but the data is used by weather researchers for forecasting and modeling,” DOFAW Fire Protection Forester Mike Walker said in a news release Tuesday.

There are about 2,800 remote automatic weather station units throughout the U.S., including Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. DOFAW manages 22 stations in Hawaii. Staff regularly check the information online.

“We monitor the temperature and humidity to determine fire risk for the area,” Walker said. “There are stations elsewhere that have cameras that enable early fire detection, hopefully we will be adding some cameras to our stations soon.”

While the units may not be able to indicate whether there is an active fire, the information and the data they collect are valuable in monitoring fire threats, DLNR said.

“They are a great tool to determine fire risk, and we have two portable stations that can be deployed to monitor local fire conditions,” Walker said. “One portable was deployed during the Leilani volcanic eruption on Hawaii island to monitor weather at a geothermal plant. The lava flow cut off access and we couldn’t get back to it for almost a year.”

Each unit costs $25,000 to set up and another $1,000 each year per station to maintain.