Weather Datasets to Help You Meet New Pipeline Regulations
New pipeline regulations by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for the gas/fuel industry now require companies with pipelines to actively monitor weather conditions that threaten pipes. Natural disasters and hazardous weather can cause pipes to shift, leak, or spill, ultimately leading to explosions, wildfires, PR nightmares, lawsuits, and more. The old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” certainly applies when it comes to natural gas infrastructure and extreme weather.
Fortunately, progressive organizations are harnessing weather technology and data to create resilient solutions that keep employees and customers safe as well promote a healthier bottom line. And they are turning to Baron Weather to provide services like real-time weather monitoring and custom alerting to assist in meeting these regulations quickly.
Extreme Weather: Water, Water, Everywhere
Weather experts recommend datasets that help organizations monitor extensive rainfall over a short amount of time or prolonged rainfall that saturates the ground, causing mudslides, ground movement, or other issues that can damage pipes.
“The rainfall accumulation datasets we provide can be of significant benefit because we perform our own radar analysis to determine the accumulation – which has been proven to be very accurate,” said Dan Gallagher, Baron Weather sales engineer and meteorologist.
In fact, Baron datasets provide rainfall accumulation data everywhere within a customer’s service area – not just at observation points. Baron’s Flash Flood Risk product can provide up to a 2-hour, highly accurate, “heads up” for flash flooding.
You can solve the “over-alerting” problem with flash floods with a new model exclusively from Baron.
Baron’s Accumulated Rain product can also provide historical rainfall accumulations at various time intervals up to seven days in the past to further gauge soil saturation and the most problematic flooding.
“Beyond the quality of the weather data itself, another significant reason to evaluate a Baron solution is the way we deliver the GIS data,” said Gallagher. “We are delivering feature layers in a format compatible with an organization’s Esri infrastructure. This allows for not only easy incorporation into their system but also gives them the power to perform analysis with their own non-weather datasets, such as their mapping on their pipeline locations. how easy that makes it to get into an existing ArcGIS system. And, for those outside of Esri, we have solutions for them as well."
Baron’s weather data, in tandem with a natural gas company’s pipeline information, also means proactive, automated processes can be set up to identify sections of pipeline that may be vulnerable when rainfall thresholds are exceeded or even when temperatures plummet.
New Pipeline Regulations and Frigid Conditions
Freezing weather, a problem once reserved for pipelines in northern regions, can now threaten piping in southern areas as well. An example of this is a massive winter weather system that occurred in February of 2021 which caused power outages across Texas. Extreme temperatures resulted in frozen natural gas wells, which caused problems as residents relied on natural gas for power and heat generation.
Baron has solutions to protect pipelines from severe cold as well. Baron’s winter weather datasets can help you monitor conditions in real-time or accurately project those conditions into the future. The data is available to developers through the Baron Weather API or through the Baron Threat Net web and mobile applications.
See how smarter data can help your team avoid or mitigate the impact to operations brought on by complex winter weather events.
When inclement weather threatens, utility companies need accurate data. Baron Weather’s solutions allow you to identify risks, track danger and alert the necessary crew of impending threats. Baron products can identify the specific weather hazard, and provide impact times, locations, and levels of severity. The result is greater situational awareness, increased lead time, enhanced safety, and more efficient utilization of resources, which drives down costs. And most importantly, it keeps people safe.