OPTICAL WEATHER IDENTIFIERS OSI’S SCINTILLATION BASED PRECIPITATION, PRESENT WEATHER AND VISIBILITY SENSOR

OWI-430 series

Optical Weather Identifiers OSIs Scintillation based precipitation, present Weather and Visibility sensor

  • Widely used by NOAA / NWS, military, airports, state DOTs, etc.
  • Measurement of instantaneous rain rate; Instant notification of precipitation. No lag period Discriminates between rain, snow, drizzle, freezing drizzle, freezing rain, etc.
  • Reports over 60 NWS and WMO codes
  • Detect rainfall extremely high rain rates > 1000 mm/hr or as light as 0.1 mm/hr; no evaporation errors
  • Reduced maintenance. No moving parts; operates 24/7 under harsh field conditions.
  • Dust / dirt on lenses does not affect measurement; ultra-low maintenance
  • Intelligent sensor; automatic correction and continuous internal monitoring; operates unattended. Algorithms continually refined from over 800 million hours of proven field operation in applications on every continent. Technology field proven for over 30 years (long track record)
  • All digital / DSP based design with no temperature sensitive analog components.

OWI-430 utilizes signals from forward optical scatter, in-beam (optical scintillation), ambient light, temperature, and humidity to accurately determine meteorological optical range (visibility), precipitation type (rain, snow, hail, drizzle, etc.) and precipitation amount.

  • OWI-430 also reports atmospheric extinction coefficient and ambient light levels required by RVR algorithm
  • Transmitter (TX) contains an infrared Light Emitting Diode (LED)
  • Receiver (RX) contains two (2) independent optical receiver assemblies, each consisting of a photo diode, lens with dual heaters, and pre-amplifier electronics
  • One of the receivers detects present weather (in-beam) and the other detects visibility (forward scatter).

With the addition of the acoustic hail and ice pellet sensor (HIPS) the OWI-430 provides superior snow, ice pellet, hail and freezing rain discrimination, far surpassing all other visibility/present weather sensors

OWI-430 series sensors work on moving platforms


  • Eco-friendly – No antifreeze or oil required.
  • works with solar power and satellite or GSM communications allowing for easy installation in very remote areas.
  • Other sensors can be added without requiring a data logger.
    • Extra I/O capability allows the OWI sensors to be used as stand-alone Weather Nodes, which will send out a single string of data to the cloud or an existing software system.

Applications for accurate measurements of Precipitation, Present Weather and Visibility 

  • Airports
  • Road Weather
  • Waste Water – Storm Water monitoring
  • Irrigation
  • ambient air stations (wet deposits vs dry deposits)
  • avalanche studies (history of precipitation types)
  • railways (icing)
  • solar and wind farms (precipitation types)

 

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