JaxWeather.net Station Log

Well after a very quiet year last year this summer is starting off with a bang and some much needed rain.

Jun 12, 2007 1.10 inches of rain fell in the Lakeshore area, wind gusts to 19 and 229 local lighting strikes recorded. BellSouth internet connectivity was affected with intermittent connectivity for a few hours.

Jun 13, 2007 0.76 inches of rain, wind gusts to 20 and 227 local lightning strikes recorded. Pebble sized hail fell for a few minutes as the edge of the storm first went overhead. BellSouth connectivity was again affected but not as severely as the 12th.

All and all the rain was still much needed even after the rain on Jun 3, 2007 Junes total rainfall is now at 5.54 inches over 1/3 of the total for the entire year so far.

-Bob

Well its been a while since I posted as things have been pretty quiet on the Station front however that just changed :)

We have added a JaxWeather FrontYard Cam, using a new Microsoft Lifecam VX-6000. I got a great deal on it at ebay and then liked it so much went ahead and got a second which was just placed into service today as the Main JaxWeather Weather Cam.

You can see them both at JaxWeatherCam.net. The old Logitech is destined to become a new BackYard cam as soon as the necessary cables arrive.

The New Microsoft Lifecams seem to have more vivid color however that could be a result of the Logitech being in service for over two years. The Lifecams also have a wider angle capture which for outside use I am not sure is better but... I may consider trying to get my hands on a New Logitech Pro 5000 (depending on if the "Boss" can be talked into yet another cam LOL)

The Vantage Pro weather station has been humming along for over a year now and just keeps doing a great job and hopefully this spring - summer we will see more weather action then last year which was abnormally quiet.

That is it for now,
Bob

Well it has been months since I posted, primarily because the original software I was using for the Station Log started having security issues, a second solution started having comment spam issues so i finally changed the log into a simple HTML file which i never got around to editing...

However thanks to the new Google Blogger solution I have reverted to a blog solution which will make it easier to keep up with. i have copied the older entries and labled them as Reposts and the date or month originally posted.

Weather here in NE Florida has almost been boring, and downright dry. we are well below normal rainfall for this time of year and keep hoping for some increased chances. as you most likely know the Hurricane season has been slightly below normal so far and well below last years number of named storms to date.

However that doesn't mean anything as we saw last years Hurricane season extend all the way to the end of the year :(

The Davis Weather Station has simply been awesome in performance as has been Weather Display and I go weeks without having to touch anything, which sure is a change from the earlier days LOL...

Ok for now that is is but hopefully I will keep this up a bit better in the future.

Enjoy and keep an eye to the sky :)

-Bob

Thursday, April 24, 2006 12:30 PM

On this past Friday, April 21, 2006 JaxWeather was officially converted over to using a Davis Vantage Pro 2 with FARS (Fan aspirated radiation shield) for all live weather readings...

The Davis Vantage pro 2 weather stations are considered by many as being the about the Top of the Line for true Home weather station use as the next level up will double - triple or even more increase the cost...

Details regarding Davis Weather Stations may be viewed here;
http://www.davisnet.com/weather/index.asp

I will post more once I can get some pictures, however the unit is impresssive and has been communicating flawlessly since it was placed into service. Fully wireless with 24 X 7 fan Aspiration, 6.5" collection cone rain bucket and Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS)...

We hope this will provide even more accurate weather information for our visitors. :)

-Bob

Thursday, April 20, 2006 11:15 AM

There really hasn't been much to report on as the Weather Station and related software, Weather Display, have been running along like a well oiled top :)

The biggest news has been with Friendship Fountain, one of my related web sites, as it was reported that the City of Jacksonville was planning on the demolition of... Well i was interviewed on TV-4 News regarding this and I started an email campaign that resulted in an email from the Mayor of Jacksonville stating that the Fountain would not be demolished.

I hope this works out in the end but it will require constant vigilance, you know how politicians can be... :)

I may have some weather related news coming along soon, time will tell... shhhhhhhhh ;)

-Bob

Friday, November 4, 2005, 2:49 PM
Well it wasn't pretty around here for a couple of weeks...

Main Weather Station computer crashed and burned and all data was lost... I had backed up Weather Display just a few days earlier however i neglected to copy the backup to another machine. Oyyyyy...

I did an emergency set up on one of my Daughters Celeron dell computers using a Backup from April 2005... While somewhat sluggish it did the job till I decided on new machine which I went with a Dell 3.2 GHz P-4 with hyper-threading, 512 MB RAM and 80 GB HD.

Got the new machine and setup Weather display using the awesome Moving WD to a new computer FAQ from the Weather-Watch Forums.
http://www.weather-watch.com/smf/index.php/topic,9234.0.html

I also was able to capture much of the lost data from the Weather-Display install on another machine that runs the web cam with the help of Brian, the Author of Weather-Display.

Then I noted I was getting dinged for barometer readings and Humidity from CWOP Quality Control. Investigating this I found the La Crosse console was reading high on Barometric pressure, why i have no clue but switched to a second console and readings appear to be back in line.

The Humidity is a different animal as I am using a 1-wire Humidity sensor from AAG. I have removed that sensor from readings at the present and am using the La crosse Humidity readings until i either figure out the problem or obtain a new sensor...

Anyway as I noted not been pretty with all this going on and I sure hope things stay on a more level keel with the end of the Hurricane season approaching, this would be a good time for everything to work right for awhile ;)

-Bob

Thursday, September 22, 2005, 6:59 PM
It has been a couple of months since I had a chance to update the Log...

Additions to the station:
WAP Access: Cell phone accessible Page: http://JaxWeather.net/WAP/
RSS Feed: http://JaxWeather.net/WeatherImages/jaxweather.rss

1-Wire Wind Instrument, kindly provided by Dave from Maryland. You can see his Weather Web Site here:
QuickSkys.com

Dave felt that my little assistance in helping him with some HTML was worth something, but I believe I got the better end of this deal and I sure do appreciate the sensor...

Brian the author of Weather Display was kind enough to code a new option into the program allowing a 1-wire wind sensor to override the wind report from the La Crosse. However as the wind instrument I have is a version one it was decided to allow the wind direction from the La Crosse to still report.

End result: Anemometer mast has 1-wire wind sensor at the top and the La Crosse Anemometer about 1 foot below. This did allow me to raise the mast about 1 foot overall and this weekend I plan on raising it another foot which I believe will give me about as good a reading as the surrounding area will allow without getting too crazy ;)

We have also setup the second La Crosse station as backyard weather station, currently running wireless but will be changing that to wired soon, and connected to Selene's Computer. As a result of some intermittent loss of signal it isn't always up to date but that will be corrected when I wire it. It reports to this page:
Johnson's Backyard Weather

Also been a couple of crazy months tracking and watching hurricanes, which so far have only caused some rain and thunderstorms here in NE Florida and we dodged another one as RITA is in the Gulf.. Still over 2 months to go so not a time to let your guard down.

That is the update for now :)
-Bob