March 2008

The weather station and me..

How does Cwmparc weather station work? - and what made me set all this up some have asked. I first became interested in the weather when I was a young boy still at school. I harboured an ambitions to own a weather station of my own, and to keep local records for quite some time. However, at that time computers such as we have now were a dream, and weather instruments were manual - needing daily care and logging. This made for a very time consuming hobby.

Today things have changed greatly. Electronic weather instruments are very accurate and reasonably small. Are tough enough to withstand the elements, and logging is done automatically with a live feed to a dedicated computer. As a backup, should the computer go down, a data logger attached to the console holds more than a weeks worth of data before it would need to be downloaded to the computer. A broadband connection provides an instant relay to 'Cwmparc weather' - giving 'live weather'.

Cwmparc weather station obtains its data from a Davis Vantage Pro 2. An anemometer on a pole 22 foot from the ground provides wind speed, a shielded temperature and humidity sensor provides temperature, humidity and dew point. Calculations are used taking into account wind speed for wind chill - or in summer humidex. A rain gauge using the tipping bucket principle measures rainfall. And a solar sensor allows the software to know current weather conditions when it is not raining, while also providing information on sunshine. A combination of solar temperature, humidity and wind speed is used to calculate evaporation, (ET).

All this information is transmitted as raw data to a console with an inbuilt barometer. Attached to the console is a logger to store the data, and a dedicated computer is connected to the console. The computer runs weather display and weather display live software. This software uses the data from the console after which the data is ftp'd directly to the website - allowing you to see live weather information as it occurs. Data is transmitted every 2.5 seconds - 24 hours a day. A 'weather web cam' is also connected to the computer - streaming live images every minute to Cwmparc weather.

Anybody that keeps a weather station will agree this is a very rewarding hobby. For instance it is amazing to look at graphs - and see the footprints that the various weather systems leave after they have passed. Amazingly the latest logs for Cwmparc weather indicate the site is visited from every corner of the world with over two thousand visits a month. The weather truly is a fascination for many thousands of people around the globe...

Thinking of changing energy supplier? Thinking of going to Npower? Read my experience of Npower before you do. You may be pleased you have .click here  to view.