Metservice to revamp weather website

lived in or around the Marlborough Sounds, he said.

Prior to the town’s new weather station, Picton was covered by Marlborough’s regional weather forecast, drawn from the multiple weather stations in the region.

Metservice began receiving data from the weather station, completed earlier this year, on April 2, the spokesman said.

The new weather station measured rainfall, wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity and barometric pressure using equipment that complied with the National Environmental Monitoring Standards.

But before the data could be published on Metservice’s website, the data must pass about a month of testing to ensure it is accurate, he said.

Once satisfied, Metservice aimed to launch a Picton weather page on its revamped website, alongside Marlborough’s regional forecast, so users could view weather data from the seaside town, he said.

Picton’s weather page was expected to get its first look-see in May, when Metservice would invite people to test out and provide feedback on its refreshed website, the spokesman said.

Once live, the new Metservice website was expected to make it easier for users to find information, and easier to provide more information to mobile devices, which was ‘‘important for those in remote areas’’, he said. It would also be more flexible so the Metservice team could communicate urgent information, such as weather warnings, faster and easier, he said.

While the layout of the site’s webpages would change, no content would be removed, the spokesman said.