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Davis Instruments Weather Club
May 2002

Dear Weather Club Member,

Welcome to the May edition of our Weather Club e-news!

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Here’s a quick preview of this month’s contents
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Be a Beta Tester for Weatherlink 5.2! . . . Cockatoos, Parrots, and the Stuff Their Colleagues Drop . . . Our Weather Refuses to Cooperate with Editorial Deadlines! . . . '97-'98 El Nino Had a Water-Tight Alibi. . . Hurricane Awareness Week, May 19-25. . . Become a National Hurricane Center Volunteer. . . Andrew Might Have Been a 5 After All. . .Most Folks Run AWAY From Storms. . . You're Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions . . . Who You Gonna Call? Davis! . . . Enjoy!

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Be a Beta Tester for Weatherlink 5.2!
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Want to test drive the new WeatherLink 5.2 for Vantage Pro? Our WeatherLink 5.2 Beta Test Program is now in full gear and you can help! The new features in WeatherLink 5.2 include data logging and graphing for the UV, solar radiation, extra temperatures, extra humidities, leaf wetness and soil moisture sensors as well as the ET value. We've also added the following new reports: Daylight Hours, Leaf Wetness Hours, Total ET, Fuel Demand and Sunburn Risk.

Note: The data logger on your Vantage Pro has data that can't be seen using- earlier versions of WeatherLink. WeatherLink 5.2 allows you to download that data

To participate in the WeatherLink 5.2 Beta Test, you must have a Vantage Pro or Vantage Pro Plus weather station. You also need WeatherLink 5.0 or 5.1 on a PC running Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME or XP, and a serial port to connect to the weather station.

Click on this link to download WeatherLink 5.2: http://www.davisnet.com/support/weather/download/WLink52Beta.exe (file size = 1.27 MB). We recommend that you install the WeatherLink 5.2 Beta version in a different folder than your existing WeatherLink software. Also, please be sure to e-mail all suggestions, feedback and bug reports to beta@davisnet.com

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Cockatoos, Parrots, and the Stuff Their Colleagues Drop
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Wayne Williams's question about cheeky Australian cockatoos ruffled a few feathers of beleaguered weather station owners who have dealt with similar issues in very creative ways. Rob Crawford of Perth told us that parrots and cockatoos seem to savor all kinds of cable. He's had them chew completely through 3/8" cable! His solution is to sleeve cables in black polypropylene irrigation hose, which is a bit tougher than the cable coating. He finds the 1/2" diameter to be a good, inexpensive fix. "It is best if you can cut the connector off the end of the cable," he wrote, "feed it down the required length of hose and crimp a new connector on the end (ensuring it is fitted the correct way round). If you don't have a tool to fit a new connector to the end, and then slit the hose lengthways, push the cable inside and tie it up at regular intervals with cable ties or something similar." (Rob added a fun addendum to his e-mail on the subject of dust devils. "In Australia, we call dust devils, 'Willy-Willy's,' an Australian Aboriginal name!" Personally, we like that name better!)

Another Western Australian, Dave Holt of Wickham, has had the same experience with cockatoos. He enclosed his cable in plastic reticulation pipe and found that it has worked so far. "The anemometer cable is easy pickings," Dave told us. "These birds also chew through my RG8U coaxial cable as well as power lines!"

Those are some tough cockatoos! Here in the States, we don't see many wild cockatoos, but that doesn't mean we don't have our share of birdy-woes.

David Sidbury, who lives within the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge in Awendaw, SC, has had both his anemometer cable chewed through and his rain collector remodeled into a bird nest. His solutions: "I drilled a 3/8" hole through the pipe my anemometer was bolted to and put the cable inside the pipe. (The end connector will easily fit through a 3/8" hole.) The fix for the rain gauge was to install a piece of galvanized hardware cloth over the top of the rain gauge. I have a manual glass tube rain gauge which I compared to the new incorrect readings from the Davis gauge because of the restricted anti bird covering, and using the PC Link software rain gauge calibration 'tricked' the software into thinking the gauge was perfectly calibrated without the cover." (Our Technical Support Manager, Brett, admires David's creativity but wouldn't recommend trying to "trick" our software.) And if birds were not enough of a headache, David's house has also sustained a lightning strike, which burned up the protected junction box, but did not do any damage to any of the other instruments or his computer. "The Protected Junction Box accessory saved me several thousand dollars," he e-mailed, "and looked and smelled like it had been in a fire after the event. Your equipment is the best." (Well, we all certainly agree with that.)

And then there's Steve Sands, an NWS Observer in San Marcos, TX, who got weary of having his rain gauge clogged with bird droppings. "I ordered a set of stainless steel 'bird spikes' on a flexible strip of metal and installed them near the top lip of each rain barrel. It is effective and installed so that it does not interfere with accurate rain collection or measurement. I have not had any further trouble from bird droppings clogging up the rain barrel, but I do have to be careful taking the lid off - those spikes are sharp."

Walter Quinn, of Westport, MA chimed in with a similar story. Living near the Westport River and Buzzards Bay, he noticed that his Monitor II reported very little rain even after a heavy down pour. Since his station sits on top of a telephone pole across the road from his home, he couldn't just take a look inside. "Finally, a power company truck came by with a cherry picker and I asked for help, and they were glad to oblige. When the lineman brought it down, I emptied it and found the hole in the bottom was blocked with sea gull droppings. I cleaned it out and up it went - back on top of the pole. It has worked perfectly since then. Surprisingly, a direct hit from a sea gull flying overhead had put my rain collector out of business, at least temporarily."

Finally, Dick Jubinville suggests using an ultrasonic frequency unit - birds and fleas alike seem to hate them.

Cockatoos or sea gulls, Davis weather station owners can outsmart 'em all!

Weather Check Quiz Question 1: True or False? Before we invented Davis weather stations, you could use a sea gull as a weather forecaster.

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Our Weather Refuses to Cooperate with Editorial Deadlines!
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Last issue, we typed the E-News while basking in a warm sunbeam from the skylights above, glancing wistfully at our Vantage Pro console that taunted us with outside temps in the mid 70°'s and light breezes. By the time we went to "e-press," the temperature had plummeted to 54° in the sunshine. Chains were required if you wanted to drive up to the mountains to enjoy the latest fresh snow. High gusty winds knocked out power and we went to sleep to the cheerless sound of pouring rain.

Apparently, St. Cloud, MN, which we had pitied for still being down in the wintry 20°'s, had stolen our nice weather. Greg Cruze, of St. Cloud wrote to tell us that, "believe it or not, in St. Cloud, MN, we hit a record high of 91°. This record high was hit just two weeks after a record 8" snowfall. Minnesota, gotta love it!"

Weather Check Quiz Question 2: If we compare the highest and lowest temperatures on record in California and the highest and lowest temperatures on record in Minnesota, which state will have the largest difference?

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'97-'98 El Nino Had a Water-Tight Alibi
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Jan Null, one of our favorite weather-guys, challenged us on several key points of the last issue. (He did so very sweetly, first calling our E-News an "excellent resource!") Being a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, he is not somebody we want to argue with. He wrote that we were mistaken in attributing severe flooding in California to the '97-'98 El Niño event.

"In 1997-98 there was minimal flooding in the state," Jan told us. "We had lots of rain (i.e., about 200% of normal), but that was spread out over 200% the normal number of days of rain. I go into this topic in some depth in http://ggweather.com/nino/calif_flood.html. Also it is ill-advised to attribute any single event (i.e., tornadoes in Florida) to El Niño or La Niña as it is impossible to ascertain if those events would have occurred anyway. We have to keep in mind that, even during an El Niño, there are all the regular things happening in the global atmosphere-ocean interaction."

Jan couldn't let our baseball-and-weather quiz question slide home either. "From the research I have done, a baseball in Denver would travel about 10% farther than at sea-level. Thus a 400-foot homer would travel about 440 feet. See the third Q&A from my column about 'Weather and Baseball' in the SJ Mercury at http://ggweather.com/archive/weacornermay09.htm." (Well, when we said nine feet further, maybe we were talking about the kind of homer that arcs way up before coming down. But if Bonds is up to bat, we'll take the extra 31 feet.)

Weather Check Quiz Question 3: According to Jan's Q & A page (see above link if you want to cheat), humidity has little effect on baseball. It that true for temperature as well?

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Hurricane Awareness Week, May 19-25
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Hurricane Awareness Week comes just in time to get us in the mood for hurricane season which sweeps in with June's warm days, and remains through November. According to the National Hurricane Center, in an average three-year period, five hurricanes strike the US coastline, killing 50-100 people from Texas to Maine. This season is looking like it will be no exception, and with the effects of El Niño, it will probably be worse than usual. Hurricane prognosticator William Grey has predicted 12 named tropical storms this season, with seven of those becoming hurricanes and three growing into major hurricanes. (The NOAA will issue its own prediction during Hurricane Awareness Week.)

In honor of the season, Joe Schmidt of the National Hurricane center contributed the following story.

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Become a National Hurricane Center Volunteer
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By Joe Schmidt

Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane Center, recently said, "Surface observations from home weather stations can be of great value, assisting in determining the strength, size and location of hurricanes".

Here are a few tips on how you can help Max and his crew of talented hurricane forecasters.

If you are fortunate enough to live in South Florida and have a radio amateur license, join the volunteers at the National Hurricane Center and become personally involved in gathering data at the Center.

Of course, hurricanes are not known for good manners and some years there may be a "storm of the week" with volunteers finding work, family and vacations taking a back seat.

Major storms become major media events. The ham shack at the Center is a favorite stop for members of the press. A collection of videotapes "Volunteers on Television" will be presented at the Dayton, Hamvention (May 17-19). Volunteer coordinators John Mchugh and Julio Ripoll will be on hand to answer questions.

If you have a short-wave receiver, during storms you can hear the "ham" operation on the Hurricane Watch Net, 14.325Mhz.

If you don't live near Miami or even on the coast your data can still be of great value in weather prediction models created by NOAA. Thanks to the Internet, a new Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) makes real time observations available to the Center and to numerous Weather Service laboratories and offices. You will see your data displayed on a new NOAA web site: http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/mesonet/ .

To find more hurricane facts and figures try these two web sites:

You can determine the likelihood of a hurricane striking your town, find out why hurricanes weaken over land (no, not friction) and obtain details on the strongest recorded tropical cyclone plus endless other storm trivia from this captivating address:http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html

When hurricanes are active try this five star URL: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_astorm15.html

Information on how to become a W4EHW National Hurricane Center volunteer observer or to join the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) will be found at: http://www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw/

Members of CWOP are eligible for a printable, electronic certificate of appreciation from W4EHW. Notify W4EHW when your station has provided weather observations to the NOAA Mesonet web site for 24 hours. W4ehw@fiu.edu

Remember to mark your calendar; the 2002 Hurricane Season starts June 1 and runs through the end of November.

Weather Check Quiz Question 4: What aspect of a hurricane has the greatest potential for loss of life?

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Andrew Might Have Been a 5 After All
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All weather enthusiasts know about the Saffir-Simpson scale which categorizes hurricanes by top wind speeds. The problem is that there aren't many wind measurement devices that can withstand the 155 mph or greater winds that define a Category 5 hurricane. For such storms, meteorologists use measurements from airplanes, storm surge, and historical data to interpret top wind speeds at the surface. But recent techniques have led researchers to reevaluate past storms. It seems that Andrew, which slammed into Florida in the summer of 1992, may be promoted from a Category 4 to a Category 5. Eliot Kleinberg, of the Palm Beach Post, writes, "For those whose lives were devastated by the costliest hurricane on record, it might be an exercise in whether one is hit by a truck or a bus." His article can be found at http://www.gopbi.com/weather/special/storm/getready/andrew_class.html.

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Most Folks Run AWAY From Storms…
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While we might be just entering hurricane season, tornado season is already off to a late but dramatic start. The weekend of the 29th of April brought a series of tornadoes, including at least one F3, which left a 100-mile-long path of death and damage in 10 Midwest counties from Missouri to Maryland. The twister killed at least six people, including a 12-year-old boy in Marble Hill, Missouri. It whipped 46 full freight cars off their tracks in Kentucky, leveled mobile homes, injured dozens, and forced hundreds into shelters. Over the weekend of May 4th, Happy, Texas, became the latest target of a series of tornados that left two people dead. News like this is particularly sobering because the long narrow path of a tornado is so difficult to predict and prepare for.

Oklahoma City's KWTV Channel 9, sits right in the middle of Tornado Alley, and they take their responsibility to keep citizens warned of impending storms very seriously. Channel 9's Senior Storm Chaser, Val Castor, has already logged thousands of miles in the last few weeks chasing potential tornadoes, funnel clouds and hail storms with his Davis Weather Monitor II.

As a meteorologist who spends a lot of his time sitting in front a computer screen and squinting over weather maps, Val loves to see weather and nature first hand. "It's the most exciting part of my job," he told us. But Val and his Weather Monitor II don't go looking for storms just for the heart-pounding fun of it. "It is very important to the TV station that we provide accurate warnings to the public to save lives. To do something I love while helping people is really fantastic."

Val and his fellow Oklahomans remember May 3, 1999 very clearly. A high-F5 tornado destroyed well-built brick buildings, and carried automobiles ¼ mile. "44 people were killed by that tornado," Val told us. "But the NWS calculated that 800 people would die in such a storm in this populated area. The media was able to provide timely warning and save lives."

An experienced storm chaser in Oklahoma, Kansas and the Texas panhandle, Val marvels at the tenacity of Davis equipment. "My Weather Monitor II has survived 105 mph winds and softball sized hail that smashed my windshield," he told us. But Val feels the biggest benefit of his Davis equipment is its ability to report accurate winds speeds which are relayed back to the station for immediate airing. "And another benefit," he added, "is that the humidity/temperature sensors let us know when we cross boundaries. Identifying temperature/dew point boundaries is key in tornado prediction."

Other storm chasers know how Val feels in the presence of such power and beauty. The hobby of storm chasing, partially fueled by the exciting, but not terribly accurate, movie "Twister," has been steadily growing. There are even several storm-chasing tour companies that will take you out to get up-close and personal with nature - for fun! Storm chasing is a hobby meant for pros. The excitement it brings is closely related to the very real danger in which the hobbyist is placed. We at Davis don't suggest that you follow the next funnel cloud you see - but we do like to hear about the adventures of those pros who know how to do it safely.

One Davis weather station that goes storm chasing belongs to Jeremy Stickle, of Manns Harbor, NC. Jeremy remembers riding in the car with his parents as a seven-year old. They were traveling through a swamp area when two bolts of pink lightning struck nearby, angling in toward each other to form a diamond shape. From that moment on, Jeremy had a passion for weather. Jeremy lists the tropical storms that he has "known" like old friends: Floyd, Fran, Dennis, Bonnie, and Felix. An amateur meteorologist, Jeremy is wise enough to model his storm chasing on the legendary storm chaser Howard Bluestein who keeps his crew and equipment at least two miles away from storms - three miles from tornados. Jeremy finds as much to learn and see in the aftermath of a storm, when the immediate danger has passed. He photographs sunsets and storm damage alike, seeing the sort of terrible beauty only weather lovers truly appreciate.

Storm chasers aren't the only ones who put Davis weather stations to good use during storm season. Storm spotters, unlike storm chasers, use their equipment and knowledge to provide warning to citizens of a particular area. John Van Pelt's truck is a high tech weather instrument on wheels, and he uses it to spot storms and to educate people about storm safety as part of Central Carolina Skywarn. John's Storm Study project's goal is to provide "constant public awareness of severe weather threats to the people of central North Carolina including threats from tropical weather that may come inland. We also help gather weather data for the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Raleigh that's helpful in forecasting and verifying severe weather, through our affiliation with Central Carolina Skywarn, the volunteer spotter organization in our part of North Carolina." When not out patrolling for impending storms, John's truck and trailer make regular appearances at schools and community events. You can learn a lot about all kinds of severe weather on the Storm Study home page at http://www.stormstudy.com.

The web is full of resources on understanding, spotting, (and chasing) storms. Tornado safety tips can be found on FEMA's webpage at http://www.fema.gov/library/tornadof.htm. Storm Track magazine has pages and pages of interesting and clearly presented materials. It's at http://www.stormtrack.org. One of our favorite finds on that site is an article written back in 1982 by David Hoadley as an eloquent response to the question, "Why Chase Tornadoes?" You can find his article at http://www.stormtrack.org/library/chasing/whychas.htm. Chuck Doswell's "FAQs About Storm Chasing and Tornados" at http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/~doswell/ChasFAQ.html is another good resource.

Weather Wise Quiz Question 5: What is the most dangerous threat to a storm chaser? A. Lightning; B. Hail; C. Sudden wind downbursts; D. Flash flooding; E. All of the above; F. None of the above.


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You're Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions
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Question 1: True. Sea gulls, like many birds, don't need Doppler radar technology to tell them a storm is approaching. Sensing a change in the weather, they often hunker down on the beach and wait for the storm to blow over. Many a sailor or coastal dweller has learned this chant in childhood: "Sea gull, sea gull, sit on the sand; It's never good weather while you're on the land." (Maybe this explains why Walter Quinn's weather station was treated so rudely by one demoted sea gull.)

Question 2: California, by a nose. California's low record was -45°F in January of 1937; its high was 134°F in July of 1913 for a range of 179 degrees. Minnesota's low was -60°F in February of 1996 and its high was 114°F in July of 1936, for a range of 174 degrees. (Source: The Weather Book, by Jack Williams)

Question 3: Jan Null explains it like this: "Temperature and pressure have a more noticeable effect. Air becomes less dense as it warms, so there will less wind resistance to a moving ball. And a decrease in barometric pressure also makes the air less dense. A home run ball would go as much as 20 feet farther on a 95-degree day with a barometric pressure of 29.50 inches of mercury than it would on a 45-degree day with a pressure of 30.50 inches."

Question 4: "The greatest potential for loss of life related to a hurricane is from the storm surge" according to Brian Jarvinen of the National Hurricane Center. Storm surge, which is water pushed toward the shore by hurricane force winds, has historically claimed nine out of ten victims. (Source: National Hurricane Center, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW/index.htm)

Question 5: Best answer: F. None of the above. Second best answer: E. All of the above. Lightning, hail, high wind, and flash flooding are all plenty dangerous, but the most severe threat to storm chasers, according to Tim Vasquez of Storm Track magazine, is hydroplaning in your vehicle. In fact, hydroplaning caused the only documented storm chaser death. (Source: Storm Track magazine's Storm Chasing FAQ, at http://stormtrack.org/chasfaq.htm.)

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Who You Gonna Call?
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Each month after the E-News goes out, we receive messages back. Sometimes the messages are in response to a story we shared; other times they are a request for help of some kind. We read all the emails, answer those we can, and pass the rest on to the appropriate departments.

We think you should know, though, that if you're interested in the fastest possible reply, news@davisnet.com may not be the best place to send your message. Questions about how things work should be addressed to tech support directly at support@davisnet.com. For general information about the products, such as how much cable comes with a station contact sales@davisnet.com. To request a catalog to be sent to you by mail, click here.

Please continue to send your comments, weather URLs, and story suggestions to news@davisnet.com. We look forward to getting your comments and any responses you have to the E-newsletter. Member participation is what keeps the E-newsletter alive and kicking.


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Well, that’s it for this month. You'll be hearing from us again next month!
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