A new website that uses data from a private weather station at Ten Mile Point should be a boon to local residents as well as recreational boaters and ocean enthusiasts in and around Cadboro Bay.
The weather station is owned and maintained by local resident Julian Elliott, a San Francisco native who retired to Saanich with his wife. While Elliott has been operating the weather station since 2006, the user-friendly website will be appreciated by outdoor enthusiasts, he said.
“I’ve always been interested in weather and saw this as a great opportunity to set up a station to monitor it just for myself,” Elliott said. “After a while, I got involved in submitting it online to a worldwide network and then friends encouraged me to make it more widely available to the community.”
Elliott’s data is part of an international network of government and private stations used to monitor weather conditions, refine local forecasts and improve climate change projections.
“While I haven’t before tailored it to the public, some residents check it to see what real-time local conditions are, which can be very different from public reports as they usually rely on data from Victoria International Airport,” he said.
Elliott said some sailors and kayakers have been accessing his data for years through a rudimentary website to monitor real-time weather in the micro-climate around Ten Mile Point and Baynes Channel before transiting. Its unique location at the tip of Ten Mile Point makes it the easternmost weather station on Vancouver Island, and one of the first to log the southeasterly storms that pass through during winter months, he said.
“Sixty-four knots is the record. That was an exciting night,” Elliott said. The weather hobbyist is open to feedback from residents about how to improve the website. To check it out, go online to tenmilepoint.com.
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