Despite lobbying from the local community, South Gippsland Shire Council and newly elected Monash MP Mary Aldred, the Yanakie automatic weather station is no longer operational, leaving farmers, fishers, and local businesses without local weather data—and raising questions about why such an essential service couldn’t secure the funding needed to keep it going.
The station, established in 2012, operated for a decade with a one-off federal government grant. Now, notwithstanding its importance to the community, neither the federally funded Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) nor South Gippsland Shire Council has stepped forward with the annual funding required.
The situation stands in stark contrast to Nilma North, where a similar weather station faced closure but was saved after community advocacy prompted Baw Baw Shire Council to commit to three years of funding in partnership with BOM.
Meanwhile, in Mansfield Shire, the local council has just opened a new weather station, and no longer has to rely on the closest BoM site 28 km distant. The solar-powered station is equipped with sensors measuring wind speed and direction, rainfall, temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, and UV radiation.
To make this data publicly accessible, Mansfield Council partnered with Jane’s Weather to launch a local weather webpage. The platform provides real-time conditions, daily summaries, historical data, and leverages artificial intelligence to offer local 8-day forecasts tailored specifically for Mansfield.
Mansfield, Nilma North and Yanakie are three of around 650 stations across Australia recording temperature, wind speed and rainfall data. According to the ABC, “about 200 of them are owned by local councils or privately, but the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) operates and maintains them.”
A spokesperson for the BOM told the ABC said it could maintain and oversee weather stations only where a “formal funding agreement” was in place and that recent closures were “due to the customer advising the bureau to cease operations”.
While South Gippsland Shire Council representatives recently travelled to Canberra to lobby for federal funding, in a previous statement to the Prom Coast News, Interim CEO of South Gippsland Shire Council Tony Peterson, said that, “It was always the agreement that once the funding expired Council would not continue to maintain the station as providing weather services is not a service of local government.”
Neither the council nor the BoM’s position is helpful for communities that need accurate, localised weather information.
“We didn’t hear about the planned shutdown until April, so there was certainly no transparency,” local farmer Robert Tracy told the ABC. Matthew Marriott, who hosted the weather station on his farm, also spoke to the ABC, and said the closure has disrupted daily operations.
“It’s too valuable to lose. It provides critical data for us farmers, as well as local fire brigades, park rangers, professional fishermen, recreational boaters and tourists,” Marriott said. Cara Schultz
