Sunfish Weather Station

One of the University of Waterloo Ph’d students who is doing her research here at Sunfish Lake and assisting with our learning about our lake ecosystems would like to place a small weather station on the lake to help better record the date she needs on water and air temperatures, effect of winds, etc.  Since we have no policy for rafts on Sunfish Lake our water committee deferred to the Sunfish Executive who would like to seek a vote of the Sunfish Lake Association membership on allowing this raft to be placed on the lake for the next year or so.

The raft would be anchored towards the north end of the lake in the middle alongside one of the buoys already in place.  The raft apparently is about 8 feet by 8 feet in size and about five feet high.  It consists of an anemometer, temperature and humidity sensors, a net radiometer, a solar panel and a data logger box.  A photo of it is below.

The data from the various teams of researchers we have working at Sunfish Lake has been very important and helpful to our understanding of our watershed, as well as our e-coli, coliform and cyanobacteria issues.  With thousands of lakes in Ontario we are lucky to have these researchers helping us here at Sunfish Lake and the hope is that most families won’t mind the visual appearance and mooring of the weather station for the next year while she completes her research.