New weather station in DeFuniak Springs

A new weather station is giving DeFuniak Springs residents and officials access to real-time local weather data.

Walton County Emergency Management recently installed a WeatherSTEM station which includes multiple weather sensors and systems to gather information.

The information can then be accessed by anyone online.

Officials say the data can be crucial in emergency situations, and they hope to install additional stations.

"We're hopefully looking to put a few more around the county because we do lack real-time weather conditions or weather stations throughout the county. We need those for things like hazardous materials incidents, you know what's the wind speed, direction, humidity and that all helps us with our response," said Jeff Goldberg, the director of the Walton County Emergency Management.

Some of the information available includes soil temperature, heat index and rain fall amounts .

You can access this data at https://walton.weatherstem.com/wcem. You can also call or text "wcem" to 213-2520 for live weather information.