On September 8th, 2019 Luc Trullemans created the facebookgroup called “Meteo Club Belge”, mainly focussed on people which are really interested in meteorology and climatology.
During May 2020, Luc Trullemans together with Michael Bleret, two passionate meteorologists, started discussions about some wellknown cold spots in the Ardennes region. These places will gradually form the base of the “CMB”-network, equipped with automatic Mobile-Alert temperature devices. Drawback of these devices: they need wifi to transmit their data.
It was known that during nocturnal radiative cooling - bright nights with little wind - temperatures can seriously drop in some valleys of the Ardennes, such as Kuchelscheid (eastern part of belgium). At that time Kuchelscheid was known as the coldest place in our country under such circumstances.
During late spring, temperature often drops below freezing point: on May 6th 2020, even a value of -4.4°C was observed!
The question arose how many valleys in the Ardennes (but not only limited to the Ardennes, also elsewhere) face such low values when these typical weather conditions are in place.
A network was created which later became the BMCB-network.
The first weather station was installed at a location in one of the highest valleys of belgium, called Enkelberge Mühle, at an elevation of 580 meters in the valley of the Holzwarche (Rocherath).
Data was now available to compare this new place with the “cold” Kuchelscheid.
Shortly afterwards many amateur stations were installed at Banmühle (Büllingen), Rettigny, Langlire, Schönberg, Neidingen, Recht, Deidenberg, Wirtzfeld, Wisembach, ...
They could prove how low temperatures can drop, but also how many people - not only a few - are getting affected by such low temperatures.
After many nocturnal observations when heavy radiative cooling took place, they discovered Kuchelscheid is not “the” coldest spot, but only one of the many valleys in the Ardennes.
It was proven that temperatures at Deidenberg, Banmühle, Wirtzfeld, Chêne, Mürringen, Braunlauf and even Schönberg and Neidingen have often lower temperature readings, mainly during winter season.
During this research they met several people which were also interested in these special conditions.
As such, Karel Holvoet, a real “cold-spot”-lover travels each year hundreds of kilometers to gather data of uninhabited areas. On the peatland of Elsenborn he measured -18.2°C during winter season 2020-2021…
This study brings an important added value to understand the behavior of air masses near the surface.
Finally, a more professional network was established with more and more weather stations installed all over the country around the already existing stations.
Today's stations temperature measurements now comply with WMO-standards.
These devices work completely independently on the Sigfox network and work on solar energy.
Many people are now part of the bilingual community, hence the name change to the "Belgische Meteo Club Belge (BCMB)". The network of stations continues to grow rapidly thanks to members such as Kristof Willemyns, Geert Vandenbrande, ...
Many of the BMCB-observations are available on third party websites, for example "Meteociel", "Weather Underground", “HetWeerActueel”, “NoodweerBenelux”, "Meteobelgie"/"Meteobelgique" and shortly "InfoClimat".
Day after day, the network proves its usefulness during cold, radiative nights and several weather forecasters take the observations of the BMCB monitoring network into account.
But also in other situations, such as during warm sunny days, the urban weather stations will be very representative for a large part of the population.
All these values were compiled, made readable and usable on the BCMB website by Robin & Geert Vandenbrande. The websites are also constantly evolving and expanding.
This is an example of great teamwork!
If you would like to join our network by purchasing weather station equipment, we would like to point out that we do not receive any compensation but prefer those stations that comply with WMO-regulations.
Luc Trullemans was the 1st president of the club (until February 2024), now Sébastien Verachtert has taken over the presidency.
The observations of the BMCB-weather stations are available (with updates each 10 minutes) on https://meteo-be.net or https://bmcb.info
Do you want to join our network? Or do you want to buy a weather station? You can contact us:
- Flandres (including Brussels NL):
Geert Vandenbrande: [email protected] - Wallonia:
Luc Trullemans or Sébastien Verachtert: [email protected]
