Weather
Why We Care About Weather
Weather is important to all of us. Knowing the weather can answer a lot of questions. What should I wear? Is it a good day for golf, for gardening, for going to the lake, for watering the yard?
And sometimes the questions to be asked are is it safe to go out, to drive through that floodwater across the roadway, even to run through the thunderstorm to a neighbors.
Because it is so important, Oak Hill Fire Department has assembled some assets to help people in this community better
understand what is happening with local weather right now. Much of the information is made available on the
Internet so no special equipment, radios, are needed to get the latest information. All that is required is
a PC connected to the Internet.
Weather Station
Oak Hill Fire Department has a state of the art Davis 6163 weather station located at Station 301 in Circle Drive,
together with a Panasonic HCM371A weather cam, and a Reecom R-1630 weather radio. Together they provide an up to the minute
picture of local weather, and are all broadcast over the Internet.
Davis 6163 Weather Station |
Panasonic HCM371A Weather Cam |
Reecom 1630 Weather Radio |
The weather station's detailed data is available on the Weather Underground network of weather stations here.
Data includes: Temperature, Barometric Pressure, Wind Speed & Gusts, Wind Direction, and Rainfall Rate. History is also
maintained and most data can be charted for any period of interest, to see trends.
Realtime data transmitted from the Oak Hill Fire Department weather station
Current Weather Cam picture of the Training Tower in Mackey Field on Circle Drive
The Weather Underground wesite also makes available a
history of Weather Cam pictures.
In addition, on that same page, there are movies from the pictures captured over a day which show the weather and the training tower activities in fast-action sequence.
Weather Radio is a 24x7 service available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (
NOAA) Federal Agency as a service to
the public. In addition to weather conditions and forecasts, it also broadcasts emergency notifications of all types.
To listen to the weather radio, you can either purchase a special weather-band radio, available from most electronics stores, or you can
hear it broadcast over the Internet.
The Austin local weather radio call-sign is WXK27 and it is
rebroadcast by
Oak Hill Fire Department over the Internet.
Clicking on the link (and selecting Run or Open, not Save) will launch your default media player and play the weather radio.
Extreme Weather History
Austin is a city of weather extremes. Examples range from the record 9.7 inches of snow that fell on November 11, 1937
to the record high temperatures of 112F that occurred on September 5, 2000, the record low of -2F on January 31, 1949
and the 19 inches of rain that fell September 9-10, 1921.
Floods drowned 13 people in 1981 when 10 inches of rain fell in 4 hours, placed 200 homes under water in 1991,
and in 1998 damaged 454 homes. Floods swept away the Great Granite Dam constructed in 1893 and lost in 1901 - this
was the pride of Austin and was located close to today's Tom Miller dam.
Of all the States, Texas holds the record for the greatest average number of tornados, clocking 139 per year of which 29 are strong
to violent (F2-F5). In 1922, one was photgraphed over the Capitol building. And in 1997, the nearby Williamson County township of Jarrell was devastated
by an F5 twister that took 27 lives.