Now streaming live!

We're experimenting with a live (or nearly live) streaming feed of the WeatherCam. It updates almost every second depending on the load on the CPU.

Speaking of CPU loads, something caused a snafu with all of our data feeds after midnight last night. Things weren't back to normal until I rebooted late morning. Ah well, that's why we have that disclaimer thingy at the bottom of the page. Hey, this is a hobby. . . and well, things screw up. Ask some of those radio controlled airplane guys about that!

I should add, however, that our data is kept as up-to-date and accurate as possible, even with shutdowns/lockouts of our computer. Our regional radar and satellite images (for which we pay $) are very, very reliable. The only things that seem "sketchy" are the icon that shows "cloudy, partly cloudy, clear, etc."and, also, NOAA Radar. These items are provided by our tax dollars. Government entities could do a much better job of feeding that info.

Automated WeatherCam

I have been manually creating the "weather movie" every evening. It wasn't a long process but I had to remember to do it. Not anymore! The entire process is now automated. Every night at 10:00PM the still captures will be converted into an .avi file, another process will encode that large file into a much smaller .wmv and finally, the file will be ftp'd to our server at 10:05 PM for all to enjoy.

(Click to watch the latest.)

This was fun! Plus, I got to do some easy command line coding (eeek...a DOS prompt) which I haven't done in years.

Think of it . . . video captured, processed and distributed automatically. Maybe nothing to the uber geeks . . .but really amazing to me.

Snowy Morning

About 1/2 inch of snow fell here in Oldham County this morning. Some of it must have accumulated in the rain gauge because, as the temp warmed today, it showed some precip (0.04).

It cleared nicely in the afternoon. The "conditions" icon, however, remained cloudy. This icon is generated by conditions at Standiford Field. The file that generates it hasn't been updated since 10:51 this morning. Something's broken at NOAA.

So, I did a manual override to display the correct conditions. I also have an automated override so that if it starts raining here at the station the icon will override NOAA and show rain in the icon.

Tech - Precip type radar added

I've subscibed to a "precipitation type" radar, otherwise known as "winter radar". It shows the difference between rain (green), snow (blue) and ice/sleet (pink). There's no legend on the display yet as it's a beta version. It performed pretty well during last night's freezing rain episode. It certainly gave a better image than NOAA's radar - at least in this instance.

Freezing Rain

Snow was in the forecast, instead, we got a fast moving burst of sleet and freezing rain. The anemometer froze up late in the morning. It was interesting to note that most of the personal weather stations all started showing freeze-up (zero wind) at about the same time.

I broke the ice off our instrument to get us back into business. This points out the importance of not mounting weather instruments high on poles or buildings. When they need maintenance you've got to be able to reach them.

Our favorite downy woodpecker, "Woodrow" had been feeding at his ice covered feeder earlier.

Technical Notes Archive

I've decided to move all of the technical notes into this new blog area. Here are all of the earlier notes. Future notes will be posted individually.
-----------------
1/18/07
ADDED INFRARED SATELLITE ANIMATION
Now displaying a looped video of the black and white IR satellite image of the USA. Black and white was chosen over the "enhanced" color version for clarity and aesthetics.

1/17/07
UPDATED PAGE LAYOUT
A new look! It allows for more flexibility in adding content and larger, easier views of graphics. Look for improved radar and satellite views in the future.

1/13/07
WEATHER CAMERA MOUNTED OUTSIDE
Weather camera now mounted outside. The view is toward the northwest. Be sure to check out the "weather movie" link.

1/11/07
MAINTENANCE UPDATE
Station has been migrated to dedicated computer. Weather camera not connected or updating at this time. Hoping to get cam fully installed this weekend.

1/11/07
SITE MAINTENANCE
Down for a few hours after 6PM Eastern to transfer the station to a dedicated computer. It is hoped that this will solve file upload and lock-up problems.

1/10/07
MISSING DATA & WEATHER UNDERGROUND PROBLEM
Have stopped sending data to Wunderground for unknown reason. Also, solar, UV, and moonrise data are missing. Looking into it. Weather station software is very, very quirky.

1/6/07
STATION LOCATION CORRECTED
Station location is now correct on Google Maps and mesomaps.

1/4/07
STATION LOCATION INCORRECT
The latitude, longitude and altitude of the station was originally determined using Google Earth. A recently obtained a GPS reading which showed that the original figures were a little off. That has now been corrected in station software but is not (yet) being reflected in the Weather Underground data. So, if you check out the station on the Google Map site or on a Mesomap it's a little south of where we really are located.

1/4/07
UV SENSOR WORKING NORMALLY
Finally enough sunshine to check that the new UV sensor is feeding data properly.

1/4/07
FORECAST DISCREPANCY RESOLVED
The forecast discrepancy seems to have resolved itself. This is a common problem with Weather Underground and could arise again.

1/2/07
FORECAST DISCREPANCY
Have noted discrepancy in forecast provided by Weather Underground. Looking into it.

1/1/07
INTERMITTENT CONNECTIVITY
Server connectivity problems so updates could be erratic.

12/30/06
RAIN GAUGE REPAIREDRain gauge has been inoperative for many months. It has now been repaired. The readings for hourly and daily rain should be correct effective

12/31/06. UV SENSOR REPLACEDWill be watching for results from this repair on the next sunny day.