HORRY COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – Horry County Fire Rescue installed four new weather stations at fire stations across the county to use in collaboration with Horry County Emergency Management to monitor weather conditions.

Fire rescue installed them ahead of this hurricane season after the one at the M.L. Brown Jr. Public Safety building in Conway helped them learn about conditions during Hurricane Dorian.

“The most amount of information we can get is always going to be the most useful,” said Horry County Public Information Officer Thomas Bell.

Horry County Fire Rescue Public Information Officer Tony Casey says there’s a lot of useful, important information they can use coming from the stations.

“Everything from humidity, temperature, water,” he said. “Anything that might be coming through we’ll know what’s coming at us.”

Horry County Fire Rescue maintenance staff put them up in each corner of the county at Forestbrook, Finklea, Allens and Red Bluff fire stations early this year ahead of the anticipated above average hurricane season.

“We can kind of see the differences of okay, we really need to focus on this area versus that area,” said Bell.

This, after they’d been using the one in Conway.

Horry County Fire Rescue and Emergency Management used a weather station installed at the M.L. Brown Jr. Public Safety building in Conway during Hurricane Dorian and found that the coastal areas were getting hit harder than areas like Aynor.

Now with the four new weather stations, they’ll be able to get a bigger picture of weather conditions all over the county.

“The weather might be a little different on the beach side than it is out here in Aynor, so if we can pull information from both it helps us kind of line up what we need to do to respond,” Casey pointed out.

Funds from HCFR’s general budget paid for the $300 to $400 stations and emergency management collaborates with fire rescue so both teams know which areas of the county to respond to during a hurricane.

“That information can come back to the emergency operations center, just so we kind of have a better idea of what conditions are looking like,” said Bell. “Horry County Fire Rescue does have a liaison sitting there as one of our emergency support functions. So, they coordinate with us everything that is happening in the county that they are responding to dealing with.”