Long-Time Bar Harbor Business Rainwise Moves Out Of State, Employees Let Go

It's been a hard few weeks for the employees of Rainwise.

The employee-owned company known for making precise weather gauges and instruments that spent many years in Bar Harbor before moving to its current facility in Trenton was sold to Nielsen-Kellerman in in 2020. Nielsen-Kellerman is based in Boothwyn, Pennsylvania.

The workers produced their last weather instrument here in Maine on May 27.

According to a Facebook post by Gary Eaton yesterday, who has worked for Rainwise for 34 years, half of the employees were let go this week and the other half will face the same fate next month. The employees were told of future plans with the new company back around Easter.

The company Rainwise was actually started back in 1974 where it is now moving to, in Pennsylvania. It then moved to Bar Harbor in 1981 where it began to produce the WS-1000, the first digital weather station. Nielsen-Kellerman, Inc. has also recently acquired Ambient, a company known for producing affordable weather stations, according to the Nielsen-Kellerman website.

Both Rainwise and Ambient produced weather stations that show current and past temperatures, barometer readings, rainfall amounts, wind speed, and other conditions via a dashboard that users can monitor online, like the information provided from the gear located on the summit of Mount Cadillac on Mount Desert Island.

Many of the workers at Rainwise were long-term employees, and the majority of them voted to sell the now world-renowned business to Nielsen-Kellerman almost two years ago.

We wish the former employees of Rainwise who are our Maine friends, neighbors, and family members, all the best in the future.