Davis Instruments Weather Club
September 2000
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Here's a quick preview of this month's contents:
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The Best for less...Picture perfect in the Perfect Storm...Observation's standard time...and Outsmarting our software. Enjoy!
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Davis: Get the best for less. Weather Monitor II now $100 less!
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For those of you still waiting for the right time to buy your weather station, this is it! As of September 1st we reduced the prices of all our Weather Monitor II stations by $100. This includes our standard Weather Monitor II, along with our Complete, EZ-Mount and Wireless models. You get the same high quality weather station at an even better price.
How can we do this? Our R&D, purchasing, and manufacturing departments all teamed together to increase efficiency and decrease costs. And we're passing the savings on to you. We don't have many sales or promotions to sell our products. We like to offer our stations at fair prices all the time. That's why this price reduction is such a big deal. And it's right in time for your holiday shopping.
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Cool Applications: Watching for The Perfect Storm
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Last year about this time, we asked you to watch out for Davis "stuff" in upcoming Hollywood productions like "The Perfect Storm" and "Castaways". While we haven't heard anything about "Castaways" -- we can't even find a website for it -- we're proud to say we made the cut in "The Perfect Storm". According to our resident mariner, our Weather Forecasting Quick Reference Card was prominently displayed several times in the wheel house of the Andrea Gail.
"The Perfect Storm", based on Sebastian Junger's book of the same name, takes place in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Both the book and movie recount the storm's development and impact on Gloucester and the fishermen who sail from it. The storm was really three storms that combined, creating waves up to 100 ft (30 m) tall. It's referred to as the "no-name" or "perfect" storm because it wasn't named, as most hurricanes are. To learn more about the storm check out http://perfectstorm.warnerbros.com/cmp/flash-thestorm-fr.html. To find out where you can see the movie -- and our Quick Reference Cards, go to http://perfectstorm.warnerbros.com/cmp/moviephone.html.
Not far from Gloucester lies the island of Martha's Vineyard, the home of Maxwell Butler. He's the teenage meteorologist who runs a weather center from his charter school (www.mvpcs.org/weather.html). When we featured Maxwell in March 2000, he was putting together a weather project with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, Massachusetts. The project was designed to provide island-wide weather-gathering tools for trade, recreation, and public health and safety.
Since June of this year, the Davis Health EnviroMonitor has stood atop the Wampanoag Tribe's new fish hatchery. Once its host building is completed, the computer/software/web hookup will be established. It's been a group effort by Maxwell, his friends, and family. As soon as this new link is established, we'll share it with you.
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Fun Information: Observation's Standard Time
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Last month Charles from the UK stumped us with his weather question: When do people in different countries take their weather readings? Or, in other words, is there a standard time for collecting weather data each day? Here's what we found.
As Charles indicated last month, the UK takes its readings at 9:00 a.m GMT. Australia and New Zealand also checked in at 9:00 a.m., but local time, not GMT. In the Netherlands, the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut (The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) uses 00.00 UTC (Universal Time Coordination, equivalent to GMT) as its standard.
The US showed the greatest variation in observation times. East coast observations are typically recorded at 7 a.m. local time. Other U.S. standards are 6 a.m., 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. For the most part, readings vary by region and are taken at times requested by the National Weather Service in that area.
From your responses, it looks like standards vary across the world, based on historical contigency, regional attitudes, or just plain convenience!
Thanks to everyone who sent an e-mail! This was a fun topic, and we enjoyed learning with you.
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Follow -up: Outsmarting our software
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In May 2000, we started a discussion on editing WeatherLink data. Many people told us that editing wasn't the problem. They wanted to add missing data! We said you're out of luck. Well, Stephen Keeler of New York didn't agree with us. He wrote:
>My response to this is: You are not completely out of luck. There is a way to edit and insert missing data! What I do is download all the data into my computer. Then I change the time on weather station console back to the time when the console stopped collecting data. For example my weather station is set to record data every 30 minutes, so if the power went out at 7:15pm and went back on at 11:15pm, I reset the time (the date must also be reset to the day the console stopped collecting data) to 7:29pm, and wait for a couple of minutes to allow it to collect data which will be edited later, then I reset the time again to 7:59pm, and so on until it reach 11:00pm. Then you can edit the data that you know.
>You don't have to reset the clock by every 30 minutes. You can reset every hour or every two hours to make it faster and easier to edit, especially if the power is out for a long period of time.
>When you are done editing and inserting missing data, reset the time and date to the correct current time and date.
There you have it folks! Stephen did it. He outsmarted our software!
