Gabriel Cardona {Courtesy}
It’s another warm and sunny South Florida afternoon, a perfect day for family fun at the park.
But then it happens. Just as soon as you’re about to open the car door, Mother Nature shows she has a trick up her sleeve; a booming clap of thunder and torrents of rain mean a day at the movies instead.
Welcome to South Florida weather.
Yet, that all too familiar – to most of us – scenario could have been averted, thanks to the ingenuity and technological skills of 17-year-old Gabriel Cardona, a Parkland resident who’s entering his senior year at Pinecrest High School in Fort Lauderdale.
Cardona has built a free, real-time safety tool he named ParkSafe that monitors every possible obstacle the atmosphere can throw at us, including heat stress, air quality, ultraviolet (UV) rays, and, of course, thunderstorm risk. He’s designed ParkSafe to give coaches and parents concise, up-to-date guidance on when and how planned outdoor activity should be modified or perhaps even canceled.
His safety tool provides real-time data for three park locations in Parkland: Pine Trails, Terramar, and the Covered Bridge.
At this very moment, a quick peek at the weather conditions in all the parks advises “caution” for all activities due to heat stress and a “warning” due to a high UV index. Cardona uses easily explained color coding to rate each atmospheric factor.
He explains what led him to devise this safety tool for others. “The temperature doesn’t tell you everything,” he said. “There are a lot of different factors. I realized there was no single place to put it all together.”
He points out the weather app on our phones usually just provides the temperature alone. His tool not only provides more data, but also enables one to decide which activities are safe at any given time.
Although he’s only 17, one can consider Cardona a true Parkland park veteran. He’s played sports in the city for many years and now coaches a youth soccer team. “I’m always at the park,” he said.
Cardona obtains his data from a website called OpenWeather, which he describes as an industry-trusted source. He uses each location’s exact coordinates to find the data he needs.
“My main point is to get more people aware of this,” he said, adding he’s shown ParkSafe to Felicia Trainor, assistant director of Parkland’s Parks and Recreation Department.
“It’s very cool,” Trainor said. “We have a similar system here so it’s not something we would use.”
She advised him to get in touch with smaller municipalities that might not offer such a service. “Big ones already have lightning detection equipment. We are South Florida, the lightning capital of the world.”
Coral Springs resident Amy Senat is very familiar with Cardona; she’s known him and his family for years. Plus, he even coached her son’s soccer team.
Cardona told her about his ParkSafe website. Not only was she impressed, but she also uses it before she takes her son to the park. “I find it extremely useful,” she said. “I love the fact he’s doing this and using his skill set for this.
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