Davis Instruments Weather Club
October 2000

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Here's a quick preview of this month's contents:
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Be a part of the Weather Underground...Remote weather watching...Time to fall back...and We stand corrected. Enjoy!

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Davis: Weather Underground puts personal weather stations on the web!
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Many web sites offer local weather information. Have you ever wondered where they got the information? It's pretty likely that they're tapping into the Weather Underground.

The Weather Underground is one of the top weather web sites. It grew out of the "Blue Skies" project at the University of Michigan. In 1993, Blue Skies brought real-time weather information to K-12 students. The project was a success and led to the development of a weather web service. By 1995, the Weather Underground had become an independent company, separate from the University.

The Weather Underground continues to grow and add innovative features to its web site. The latest innovation allows Davis home operated weather station's data to be linked to the world wide web.

Our friends at the Weather Underground just announced the Personal Weather Station Project. Through this project, the Weather Underground hopes to build a worldwide network of personal weather stations. Data from participating weather station owners is uploaded to the Weather Underground site. When visitors to the site ask for a local forecast, data from these local weather stations is made available.

All you need to participate is a Davis Weather Station and either the Virtual Weather Station, provided by Ambient Software, or Weather Display software, written by Brian Hamilton in New Zealand. Download either application for free from the Weather Underground site: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/index.asp. Then register your station at http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/usersignup.asp. The project has been up for about two weeks now. The Weather Underground says that over 350 personal weather stations have signed up. The list of participating stations (http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/ListStations.asp) spans the globe. Each station is identified by longitude, latitude, type, and owner. The Weather Underground even provides a link to your web site.

We encourage you to check out the Weather Underground. Your data will help improve the weather forecasting accuracy in your area.

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Cool Applications: Remote weather watching
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This month's cool application takes us to Stuart Island, British Columbia http://morganslanding.bc.ca/. It's a busy sport fishing center in the summer. The rest of the year, it's a very quiet home to a few full time residents. Peter Hollenbeck of Greenbrae, CA has a cottage (with a weather station) there. In between visits, he likes to keep an eye on the weather. The way he does that is pretty neat.

Peter has set up his own Stuart Island internet site, http://c46743-a.marin1.sfba.home.com/weather/wl000905.html, to track the weather. He pulls the data from his Weather Wizard III, rain collector, and WeatherLink. His weather setup runs on battery power and is connected to a cell phone. Six times a day, the system automatically powers up the PC. A program gathers snapshot weather data (wind, temperature, rainfall), and then shuts down the PC. During the sixth power-up, the real work gets done. A period-to-date file is created, and an HTML file presenting the weather data is generated. The program then establishes a dial up connection to the internet, uploading the files to Peter's server in California. When this has been accomplished, the Stuart Island PC shuts down and powers off.

Peter uses programs written in Python (www.python.org) to make it all happen. In addition he uses AdvancedDialer, a shareware program from www.pysoft.com to initiate the internet connection, and another shareware, ShutDownNOW! from www.dworld.de, to shutdown and power off the PC at the end of each run. The system's not perfect, but it lets Peter keep track of his home on Stuart Island when he's not there.

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Fun Information: Don't forget to fall back!
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It's that time again. Those of us in the US who participate in Day Light Savings Time will turn the clocks back an hour this weekend. This means resetting the time on your weather station. If you've forgotten how to do it, follow the instructions in the March 1999 newsletter http://www.davisnet.com/news/e_news_archive/9903.asp. That's what we plan on doing!

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Follow-up: We stand corrected.
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Last month we shared what we had learned about weather observation times worldwide. In the article, we quoted GMT and UTC as European time standards. According to David Thayer, who once worked for NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology), we were slightly off the mark. David wrote :

>The correct name for the time used by The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute is (in English) "Coordinated Universal Time" or CUT (easy to remember!). CUT replaces GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), which is no longer actively used. CUT was formerly known as UT (Universal Time); I guess that was before it was coordinated!