Station Notes

Acu-Rite Upgrade

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:16:33 +0000

Thanks to emails that I received, I decided to post this update about the Acu-Rite weather station.

The original 5 in 1 sensor had a defect in the humidity sensor, causing the humidity reading to climb at night and during the day, return to the real value. Since this is uploading to Weather Underground, I wanted to get it repaired. I contacted Acu-Rite and they replaced it free of charge. I also bought an add on console, model 1500. This console is way better than the original. This displays the wind speed, peak and direction, temperature, humidity, pressure, daily rain and more, all on screen at once. There are a couple of user selectable items, as well. This pretty much resolved all my dislikes.

The original post describes how to view the data at My Backyard Weather. One thing that I do not understand, the console displays the correct pressure, as compared to the VP2, but My Backyard Weather shows it as being much lower. They are aware of this bug, but for some reason have not yet fixed it. That web site also displays the rain event, not daily rain, which is poor in my judgement.

If you wish to buy an Acu-Rite weather station, I would recommend one that features PC Connect. This allows you to upload your data to your computer and works with Weather Display - the best weather station software on the market. BTW, the 1500 add on consle does NOT allow PC Connect, which I didn't need.

You can buy the Acu-Rite directly from them here.

Speaking of upgrades, the station was recently off-line for a day due to a failed modem. The tech talked me into upgrading my service, so the upload speed went from about .1 MB, to about .6 MB. Still not real fast, but if you have an URL for one of the three live web cams, you should notice an improvement.

New Look?

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:03:46 +0000

I switched to the template web page originally, because I had to modify the scripts to work with my pages. I liked the Webster home page, because it crammed a lot into the home page. Unfortunately, I had trouble configuring it. It would not play nice with my lightning detector being on another computer, causing me to modify it for every update. Well, that put me right back where I was before! The final straw came this weekend, with it showing no snow. So I switched to the plain vanilla home page.

I also switched to a new Cell page. I like this the best of all the ones I've had to date. I had an error on the Webster Weather cell page. I could not figure out the cause, and the author never tried to help. The new Cell page is here. It does seem to take a bit longer to load, but it has all the info you need. I also added the Garage cam to the Cell Cam page. The Cell Radar page has a local view, as well as the regional view.

Metars Page Added

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:28:57 +0000

For those interested in the regional conditions, I added a page with Metars. They are listed in alphabetical order. If your metar isn't listed, send me an email and I'll try to add it. Note, most metars update once per hour. You can find the page under the Almanac menu heading.

Acu-Rite

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:53:40 +0000

CostCo has the Acu-Rite model 01050c for sale at $129.99. This is a full feature weather station, with the wind speed and direction, pressure, temperature and humidity-inside and out, and rainfall. More info here. It is a very good price for what you get, so I decided to try one. When I placed the anemometer for the Vantage Pro2, I had two choices: get the wind speed, or get the wind direction. I opted for the direction. So I placed this unit where it would pick up the speed. The 10050c will upload to Weather Underground, but it only uploads every 15 minutes. If you are curious, here is the Weather Underground page for the new station. You can compare to the original Weather Underground Vantage Pro2 page, here.

The 10050c comes with a console to view the conditions, but it does not upload to your PC. This is under development, so you will soon be able to run Weather Display, or other weather software. It does upload to their website, so you can access the current conditions from anywhere you have an internet connection. If you wish to view the current conditions, you will need to set up an account. You can give a bogus email address, because it does not appear to check that. This will only take a minute or two, and only has to be done once.

How To View The Current New Holland Conditions on the 10050c
Go here to set up, and view the current conditions.
After creating an account, in the upper right corner, click on your user name and select 'follow my friend's bridge'.
Delete the default bridge by clicking on the red X, then you must re-select' follow my friend's bridge'.
Click on the green plus sign and fill in the following-
mac: 24 C8 6E 01 06 A6
nick: user3162

You should now be seeing my new weather station's web page. Bookmark the page, and next visit will take you right to the current New Holland conditions page. Note: The page does not auto refresh.

At this time, it does have some quirks which I hope they can work out. For one thing, the console displays the total rainfall, not the daily. You can push the 'up' arrow to display the daily, but I think that should be the default. It has rained a few times sine I set it up and the daily has matched the Vantage Pro2's exactly. Another thing I don't like, which I've heard they are working on, the data on the website does not always match the console. Another minor quibble, it has a forecast, but has been showing rain ever since I installed it. I don't put much stock in those forecasts anyway, so that is no biggie.

Do not expect to get the Vantage Pro2's quality at the 10050c price, but so far I like what I have.

Twitter

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 13:26:08 +0000

Sticky

OK, this seems to be working, again. This has been on the back burner ever since Twitter changed the way to auto post tweets, then I sort of forgot about it. The current conditions are scheduled to run every other hour, with the forecast to run on the hour in between. As I understand it, the forecast will not appear on twitter if it has not changed.

To get the forecast and current conditions for New Holland, go here.

Any Pages Left Out?

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sun, 22 May 2011 17:13:23 +0000

I have pretty much completed the changeover to the new pages. I am sure there are mistakes to be corrected, so I won't say the changeover is complete, but I am not planning on converting any more pages. I did re-write the printable page, even though no one requested it. Hey, I like it, I did it for me! If there is a page you liked that I did not update, let me know.

Old Pages Still Up

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 07:13:42 +0000

As you may have noticed, I switched home pages. The old home page is still up, along with all the others. The old home page has been renamed nhweather.php. There you will find the menu for the rest of the old pages. I will keep them up until I have all the new pages online. At that time I will also increase the rate that the new secondary data file uploads. Right now it is every five minutes, the main file updates every ten seconds.

Questions, comments and criticisms are welcome.

Edit: I plan to re-write the following pages before I disable the old feed: NOAA Local Storm Report, Storm Prediction Center, Weather Display Live, Who Is Online and the At A Glance page.

The At Glance page will require a major overhaul, and I am not sure that it is worthwhile. The page was designed to print out on one piece of paper, something to hang in the workplace. I never did hang one myself, and I doubt that others do. If you would like the page to remain, drop me a line.

Alternative New Look

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 09:22:36 +0000

I put the Alternative Dashboard, by Webster Weather, up yesterday. I like this one better than the basic version in the Saratoga template. It packs a lot of info into one page, with lots of graphics. The URL is the same as before, see it here.

I added the GR3 Radar page and made temp fixes to the Daily page. All the new pages still use the old footer, I won't change that until I pull the old pages.

Again, questions, comments and criticisms are welcome.

New Look Coming

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:40:40 +0000

I have decided to switch to one of the "templated" web sites. I have struggles to port new scripts to my site, and finally decided to throw in the towel. I upload a non-standard data file, one that the templated sites do not use. All my pages use this data file. Rather than rewrite all my pages to use the templated data file, it seemed easier to just switch everything to the templated pages. Even though these pages are already written, they still need tweaking, and I want to re-write some of my pages, so this is a work in progress. Really, I just barely started, but you can see it here. There is an alternative version which I am considering, so the look may very well change. I would really like to hear comments about the new look, just click on "Send a message to NH Pa Weather" at the bottom of most pages, or leave a comment here.

Multiple Forecasts and Advisories

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:48:04 +0000

I have updated the Forecast and Advisory pages to the latest scripts from Ken True's site. They now allow multiple, selectable counties. If you do not see your county listed, send me an email and I will add it. Note, the forecast on the home page is for New Holland only and is not selectable.

New Advisories Map

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:13:19 +0000

New Map
cURLy wrote a new map to display the local advisories. I think this is an excellent script! It shows the State College forecast area with a clickable map. I put it on the Advisories page, replacing the Weather Underground U.S. map.

Contact NH Pa Weather
MCHALLIS wrote a number of scripts on the NH Pa Weather site, including the contact page. There are different anti-spam methods incorporated into the contact script. One I personally dislike is the captchas. I think the captchas put people off sending a message, and I don't don't know that they are necessary. If you wish to send a message, you will no longer have to go through the hassle of typing in those hard to read words. So, go ahead and send your thoughts, problems and wishes about NH Pa Weather!

Console View and Time To Frostbite

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 16:27:00 +0000

I put up a page to view the Vantage Pro2 console. It has the 10 second live updates and looks pretty much like the console I use here. I cheated and used the NWS forecast instead of the Vantage Pro2's but I think it is more useful, anyway. You can view it here. Thanks to Axelvold's weather & Photo for this.

I added a script to the home page (only) that pops up when the time to frostbite is less than 3 hours. This was a topic on the wxforum and a number of people contributed. I didn't expect it to show up very often, but I saw it this morning, and with the forecast, it will be showing again this weekend. Warning, this is an estimate, the temperature and wind speed can vary greatly by location, so you can easily be in trouble sooner than what this script suggests.

Weather Data Status

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:58:05 +0000

Michael, from relayweather.com, has written a PHP script and page to display the CWOP MADIS status of the weather data from NHPaWeather.com. This shows the Barometer, Temperature, Dewpoint and Wind as compared to neighboring sites. You can see the page here. You will also find the page in the menu, under Station Info.

CWOP:
"The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a private-public partnership with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Its three main goals: 1) to collect weather data contributed by citizens; 2) to make these data available for weather services; and 3) to provide feedback to the data contributors so that they have the tools to check and improve their data quality."
CWOP sends the data to MADIS

MADIS:
or Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System
Run by the National Weather Service. Go here for more info.

Some Fixes

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 14:24:43 +0000

I spent my Sunday morning fixing broken pages.

The Tropical script page was broke again. I really thought that I had it working correctly. It doesn't much matter this time of year, but it is working, now.

The NOAA image of the day script seems to break on a regular basis. It is working, for now.

A couple not in the menu, the RSS feed for the Wxsim forecast and the Chesapeake Bay Mesomap. If you like the Wxsim forecast, bookmark it, or this feed.The Chesapeake Bay Mesomap has been broken for ages. I had a crude fix which was broken. Hopefully it will stay working, now.

where did everybody go?

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 12:49:26 +0000

The 3D charts have been online for a year or more, but I was not happy with the temperature chart. I believe that they are now showing correctly. I am uploading three of them:

tempchart3d.gif
Shows the past year's average vs actual temperature by month.

rainbar3d.gif
Shows average vs actual rainfall.

trend3d.gif
This is somewhat confusing to read. It shows the temperature for the past ten years, but the data only starts five years ago. I cannot change this.

Note: The averages are based on station data, starting June of 2005.
I have not added these to the menu, you must bookmark them.

snow! It's that time of year again! I installed the heater in the rain collector so snow will melt and be recorded. There were flurries in the region, but I haven't seen them so far.

where did everybody go?
The number of unique visitors has dropped. Some days are down to less than ten. This does not count the Twitter followers, or those viewing the cell phone pages, wap and iwdl. If this continues, it is not worth the time and money I put into this web site. I am considering buying a WeatherLinkIP, which does not require a computer, and then re-direct visitors to Weather Underground. Visit the site to show your support.