It's About the Weather

This website is first and foremost a blog about weather, and things that are influenced by it.  In some fashion, gardening, nature, climate, seasons and wildlife are all related to the weather in a particular location.  Because of weather, you won't find alligators in Alaska and most rhododendrons wouldn't survive an Iowa winter.  Since weather is the primary theme here, I have upgraded the data presentation on the Current Weather page.  The page has been reorganized with new information added.  The goal was to make it useful, relevant and interesting.

First, a bit about how this works.  The Davis Vantage Pro2™ wireless weather station has two main components, a sensor array and station console.  The sensor array measures wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity and rainfall.  These data are transmitted to the station console every 2.5 seconds.  The array is powered by a battery kept charged with a small solar collector.  The console adds barometric pressure, latitude, longitude, date and time and communicates them to the PC via a USB connection.  Davis' Weatherlink™ software receives and processes these data and uploads them to the net using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).  The web page that is created is then embedded here on the blog.

Getting all this to work pushes the envelope of my computer literacy.  First, a web page must be built and the data tags specified by Davis are inserted into the code.  This page is then used as a template for the upload.  Next, a number of FTP settings and pathways must be designated in the software.  After much trial-and-error, once it is working, the rule is "don't touch a thing."  There are services and software available that will do most of this for you.  I needed something tailored to fit in with the blog, and this necessitated a custom approach.

The first section of the new page presents information for the current 10-minute period.  The Station Forecast is derived from three hours of data and while a bit vague, tends to be accurate for this location.  If it is raining beyond a light drizzle, this will be revealed by a Rain Rate figure.  The next sections provide historical data for the day, month-to-date and year for specific measurements.  This information offers a snapshot of our local weather conditions over time.  "Living in the weather..." is the tag line for this blog.  The Current Weather page reveals the weather in which we live.  For more detailed information, NOAA Annual Climatological Summaries may be downloaded from the Climate page.  Photos: Davis Instruments