Weather information is now available from Jersey Met’s offshore reef wind masts at the Écréhous and Minquiers. The three-year offshore wind project was set up to measure and collect information about wind at the extremes of the Island of Jersey’s territorial waters.
The data from the automatic weather stations is being used to help forecast the weather and improve safety at sea by providing real time wind information.
A ten metre mast and weather monitoring equipment were erected on outlying rocks three kilometres from the main island of the Écréhous and six kilometres from the main island of the Minquiers.
A number of States departments worked together on the project. The Department of the Environment led it. Ports of Jersey provided transport to and from the reefs for the engineers to install and service the mast instruments. And the live wind information is transmitted to Jersey Met’s computers by a Transport and Technical Services radio network.
The information is available at Jersey government’s website and Jersey Coastguard is now broadcasting the wind information from both reefs, in addition to its normal coastal observations.
Deputy Chief Officer, Department of the Environment, Willie Peggie said: “This complex project is improving our understanding of wind on the offshore reefs and it’ll give us some useful information over the long term. But there are tangible additional benefits; it’s feeding back data to Jersey Met so they can provide a more comprehensive service to the community, the real time wind information is already proving useful to people heading out to sea for work or pleasure, and it also improves safety.”