Davis Instruments Weather Club
October 1998
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Here's a quick preview of this month's contents:
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Davis wind cups battle Georges.... Tips on how to keep your station warm this winter.... News of a mummified Monitor in the Valley of the Kings.... And, finally, a member requests web aid.... Enjoy!
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Davis Weather Stations - Battling Georges
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Last month, hurricane Georges passed over the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba. The tiny island, located just southwest of Puerto Rico, is home to 1200 people and 7 Davis stations. Two of those stations, and their owner, Ham Radio Operator Don McGee, witnessed Georges' crossing.
Early in the morning of Monday, September 21, 1998, Don McGee hunkered down in his bunker to ballast himself against northern eyewall of hurricane Georges. He watched his consoles as they recorded the rage overhead. One, fitted with small anemometer cups, measured wind speeds as high as 163 mph - and survived the storm intact. The other, fitted with large anemometer cups, recorded a high of 145 mph before the cups abandoned the station to elope with Georges.
The National Weather Service (NWS), in contact with Don and others, plans to place weather stations on islands throughout the Caribbean to help with their Hurricane Watch program. Because of successful tracking stories like Don's, the NWS is interested in testing the accuracy of a third Saba station that measured a whopping 176 mph under the Georges onslaught.
Thanks, Don, for the Saba report. If you'd like more information on hurricanes and how they're studied, check out http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqA.html#a11. For anecdotal reports of the Saba storm and damage, see http://www.gobeach.com/georges/gsabsta1.htm.
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How-To: Keep Your Station Warm This Winter
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Winter brings a chill to everything, including to your weather station. As winter draws near, we are often asked how to prevent the anemometer and rain collector from freezing.
Our anemometer comes with drip rings to prevent rain and snow from collecting in the shaft and joints. The rings cannot completely protect against freezing - if water manages to get inside, it will freeze - but they do greatly reduce the possibility.
To keep the rain collector working you can install a rain collector heater. The heater has a thermostat control that turns the heater on when the rain collector gets cold and turns it off long before the plastic would melt. Heating the rain collector lets you measure freezing rain or the water content of snow. (Note: We do not recommend using a light bulb in place of the heater - it could permanently damage your system.)
What happens if your sensors do freeze? Just wait. Warm weather will melt the ice and your station will resume tracking wind and rain on its own.
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Cool Applications: Valley of the Kings
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"Hidden behind the Theban Hills, on the West Bank of the Nile, lies the Valley of the Kings (abbreviated as KV). It was chosen as the burial place for most of Egypt's New Kingdom rulers..." and, less famously, as the home of one Davis weather station. (Quotation excerpted from the Theban Mapping Project web site, see below.)
Kent Weeks, Professor of Egyptology at the American University of Cairo and Director of the Theban Mapping Project (TMP), has spent years researching the Valley. The TMP team's biggest discovery thus far came in 1987 when they rediscovered the entrance to a tomb called KV 5. KV 5 is now known to house the remains of some 22 sons of Ramesses II (19th Dynasty,1279-1213 BCE). With more than 110 corridors and chambers, KV 5 ranks as the largest known tomb in the Valley, and perhaps the largest in Egypt. Because of frequent flooding, the elaborate scenes and inscriptions that blanketed the limestone walls of the tomb have mostly disappeared. Today, the TMP's Egyptologists and artists are working together to piece together the extensive reliefs, pottery and funerary equipment found in the tomb.
As part of the ongoing excavation, Professor Weeks uses a Weather Monitor II and WeatherLink to track humidity within the tomb vaults. He takes readings every 2 hours and downloads the data to his PC. He needed a system that could operate with high accuracy under extreme conditions - KV 5 is dusty, hot, and extremely humid (90-98%). The Weather Monitor II, always ready for pyramid exploration, happily met his criteria.
If you'd like to know more about the excavation, Ramesses II, and the Valley of the Kings, check out the TMP's web site at http://www.kv5.com. Also, the September issue of National Geographic features an article on the KV 5 excavation, and look for Week's book, The Lost Tomb to be published this month [by William Morrow (in the U.S.) and Weidenfeld and Nicholson (in the U.K.)].
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Talk Back: Web Data
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The response to last month's request for URL's was fantastic! As promised, the new web page containing links to club members' weather data sites can be found at http://davisnet.com/weather/cool/world.asp. There's also a link on the site that lets more members, and non-members as well, submit their own links.
Following up on last month's reader suggestion, Ray J. Vaughan writes, "I enjoyed the description of Kevin Leitch's weather station on the net. But I'm not clear on how he gets the data out to his website automatically. I have a website and would love to get my data out also. Can you find a member that can explain how this is done...?"
Well, fellow club members, who'd like to help Ray out? If you have a custom solution that you'd like to share, write news@davisnet.com and we will include some explanations in next month's newsletter.
And finally, please don't hesitate to respond to news@davisnet.com with any suggestions, questions, or stories of your own. Let us know if you'd like your name or hometown to appear in the E-newsletter and, if so, remember to include it in your email!
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That's it for October's E-news! We look forward to hearing from you!
The Davis Weather Club E-newsletter
mailto: news@davisnet.com
