Apparent concern over low temperatures being featured on television weather reports has encouraged the Dunedin City Council to install a temperature censor.
The council has spent $15,000 on a weather station which has been installed above the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in the Octagon. It is expected that the weather station will record higher temperatures than the existing site at Musselburgh.
But, it seems, the council has gone one step further by installing a temperature censor to ensure that only “nice” temperatures are reported.
The Otago Daily Times (ODT) featured the weather station in its online edition for the 15th December 2006. An associated picture was captioned “Heating it up… MetService electronics technician Neil Urbahn installs an air temperature censor as part of a new weather station.”
The location seems highly appropriate. Censors have often lurked near art galleries and libraries.
The ODT reports that data from the weather station should be available sometime this week. Hopefully, by then, the council will have fired the censor and we will be able to look at the uncensored information from the temperature sensor.