Did you know that Sainte-Agathe was once home to a weather station?
In 1941, the Quebec Tourism Bureau urged the government to set up weather stations specifically to collect data on conditions and climate in ski regions. Records kept included total snow accumulation, temperature, as well as wind direction and speed. Ski resorts, hotels, newspapers and radio stations all took great interest in this information. When transmitted to the Meteorological Office in Quebec City, the data enabled local and regional climate studies to be conducted.
Later, a building was erected and sophisticated equipment installed up in the hills on Raymond St., which you can see looking southward from the train station. Sainte-Agathe’s geographical location, at an altitude of 385 m (1,260 ft), favoured the gathering of meteorological data. The station operated until the 1980s, but is now closed.
PHOTO
First rudimentary weather station installed closed to the sanatorium (photo credit: H. Bergeron, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, 1947).