In This Issue:

• Vantage Pros Pose for Pretty Portraits
• Phooey, says Physicist, to Mars Mania
• Top Secret New Product! (Okay, We’ll Give You A Hint)
• New Product: WeatherLink Downloader
• Davis Equipment Was Unfazed by Isabel’s Wrath
• Tech Tips: Davis Wind Cups vs Hurricane
• “Good Morning, Davyjonesville! The Forecast is For a Beautiful Day, Thanks To The Summer Upwelling and a Glorious Plankton Bloom!”
• You’re Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions
• Who You Gonna Call? Davis!

Jaime Johnson's Montana home has all the modern neccesities!

Reader Marilyn Ivey of British Columbia, Canada, sent us a photo and story that really impressed us; in fact her dramatic photo will be gracing the inside cover our new catalog even though it’s not of a Vantage Pro! Back in 1994, Marilyn received a Davis Weather Monitor II for her birthday, and ever since it has been giving her the pleasure of daily weather observations. But this summer, the station has been more than just a fun way for Marilyn to keep up with her weather passion. Just a few weeks ago, the raging McGillivray Fire threatened Marilyn’s home and she depended on the station (especially the wind direction and speed) to warn her when it was time to leave. The fire came within a quarter mile of her home, but luckily Marilyn, her family, and her faithful old Weather Monitor II are all alive and well.

Marilyn is a member of the Severe Weather Watch Network of Environment Canada for the Mountain Region, stationed at Kelowna. “Just last week,” she wrote, “I called in a wind gust reading from the Weather Monitor II, which was below their usual criteria, but still very significant given my close proximity to the McGillivray Fire.”

You’ll see Marilyn’s heroic old station, dwarfed by a huge pyrocumulous cloud in the background, in our new catalog.

Richard Hagan, of Los Fresnos, TX sent us a snapshot of his VP with a nice little tornado in the background – a rare occurrence on the extreme southern tip of Texas. Tamer Ali Kahfaga, a researcher at Egypt’s St. Katherine Protectorate Park, sent us a photo of his station atop one of the highest mountain peaks in Egypt.

Ghilsain Lamothe, of St. Lazare, Quebec, Canada, sent a picture of his VP Plus alongside his solar photovoltaic panels -- he uses its radiation sensors to correlate his panels’ production with actual sun intensity. He mounted his anemometer on the mast of his small wind turbine to verify the turbine’s output. Richard Woodbury considered including himself in the photo of his VP’s anemometer in Durango, CO, which is 8,500 feet above sea level, but to do so, he’d have to climb another 60 feet up the tower upon which it is mounted, which, even for a Davis cap, sounded kind of scary.

And Philip and Mignon Riedel couldn’t take a photo of their VP, because it was currently living in the dark recesses of the wine cellar they built under their Stirling, Australia, home to house their collection of fine South Australian wines. According to the VP, wine storage conditions were perfect, so the station moved back out to its normal home in the garden.

We’ll save some other stories and photos for future uses. We wish we could publish them all, as each one of them is like a page from our Davis family photo album, but alas, there’s only so much we can ask your computer to download. But we couldn’t resist sharing one of our personal favorites. It’s from Jaime Johnson, in East Helena, MT, whose photo shows just how well he appreciates the finer things in life!

Weather Check Quiz Question 1: Okay, one more to download:

Where was this picture taken? (Warning: this could be an ongoing challenge! Memorizing the stories above might help you score big on future quiz questions!)

Extra Credit: Is there such a thing as a pyrocumulous cloud, or did we just make that up?

Phooey, says Physicist, to Mars Mania

Frederick Pilcher, of the Physics Department of Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL, wrote to tell us he thinks the whole Mars Mania thing was a bit overdone. While he agrees that Mars was closest to the Earth on August 27, he asserts that the degree of that closeness is relatively unexciting.

“There is more to the story,” wrote Frederick. “The eccentricity of Mars' orbit changes cyclically over a time interval of several tens of thousands of years. The eccentricity is now increasing. This makes the closest distance between Mars and Sun, and therefore between Earth orbit and Mars orbit, slowly decrease, less now than in the past 59,619 years. By contrast, as the minimum distance between the two orbits continues to decrease, we will have an even closer approach in about another 200 years.”

Frederick, never one to underestimate our readers’ love for accuracy, goes on to say that “the significance of this ‘closest’ approach is overblown. Approaches within 60 million kilometers occur every 15 to 17 years, and the visibility of Mars through smaller telescopes is nearly as good as at the current close approach. For northern hemisphere viewers, the view in September 1988 at slightly greater distance was even better than what we are now enjoying because Mars was much higher in the sky and viewed through a smaller column of distorting air currents.”

Frederick concludes that “it is every 15 to 17 years, not every 60,000 years, that an extremely close approach to Mars warrants, and receives, the great observational attention now being directed to this planet.” Thanks, Frederick!

(Being in marketing ourselves, we conclude that the whole Mars Mania stratagem was probably a particularly well-executed PR campaign; the brain child of some large greenish brains, housed in enormous greenish heads perched atop the frail, glowing bodies of the staff of Mars’ leading public relations firm, which also came up with the whole Martian Face thing, over which they are still greenishly giggling. Our proof: check out the Martian Happy Face crater. Those Martians are nothing if not comedians.)

Top Secret New Product! (Okay, We’ll Give You A Hint)
Come closer; we are going to have to write in hushed tones now. We just can’t resist the temptation to let you in on a little Davis secret. We just happen to know that the Davis wizards and wizardesses, locked away up in their tower laboratories, are working on a terrific little gizmo that will almost certainly be peeking out of many of your Christmas stockings this year. The bigwigs here at Davis won’t let us spill all the beans, but maybe we can get away with just a few hints: It’s small, it’s very sleek and handsome, it’s a technological wonder, and anyone who does anything outside will want one.

And remember, if anyone asks, you didn’t hear it from us.

Weather Check Quiz Question 2: Is it bigger than a breadbox?

New Product: WeatherLink Downloader
If you use your weather station for your home or small business, you probably have no problem downloading your data right to your computer. You connect either your console or Weather Envoy in to your computer and that’s it. But many of you may have remote stations set up at a distance from the computer. For those uses, we have a quick and easy solution for moving the data from the field installation to the computer: our New WeatherLink Downloader which transfers data from a WeatherLink data logger into your Palm™ Pilot or compatible PDA. From there, it’s a simple process to transfer the data from the Palm™ Pilot to your PC.

Davis Equipment Was Unfazed by Isabel’s Wrath
By John Van Pelt, of The StormStudy Project, a privately funded project based in North Carolina which educates the public about severe weather threats. The StormStudy Project also helps gather weather data for the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Raleigh, through their affiliation with Central Carolina Skywarn. John took his specially equipped Storm Study Truck, with a Davis Vantage Pro mounted on top, for a visit with Isabel, and filed this report for our readers.

Hurricane Isabel made landfall in North Carolina and zoomed up the East Coast on Thursday, September 18, leaving massive damage in its wake from storm surge, rain and high winds. Many in Isabel’s path will be without power for weeks or longer and it could take many months or years to rebuild everything that was damaged. Some of the damage can never be fixed. Two-hundred-year-old houses were damaged or destroyed in North Carolina. New channels were formed on the Outer Banks and the main road, Highway 12, washed out. Virginia took massive damage; Baltimore’s historic waterfront district was flooded and worst of all, more than 30 people lost their lives.

As the Project Lead for The StormStudy Project and a member of the Hurricane Intercept Research Team, I traveled to Atlantic Beach, NC, to help document Isabel’s landfall by collecting data and shooting still photos and video of the storm’s impending strike, landfall, and aftermath. Davis Instruments gear was with us every minute and every mile of the trip and performed flawlessly during even the worst of the storm in our staging area – luckily only 69 mph gusts, but with winds sustained in the 40’s and 50’s many hours after landfall.

The Hurricane Intercept Research Team’s Chevy Tahoe and StormStudy Truck both used Davis Instruments equipment to record data and display it, and, in many cases, broadcast live on national and international TV during the entire event. We also set up an additional Wireless Weather Monitor II EasyMount station using a Vantage Pro console and anemometer to record the data at our hotel location. For the next storm, we’ll use our wireless Internet connection to send the live data to our sites.

As the winds howled, sometimes driving rain at nearly 70 mph and other times whipping sand at the same speeds, we watched the ocean surge forward and the shingles flap on buildings as Isabel rushed in and then turned northward. This was a great shakedown test for our portable equipment and as always, the Weather Monitor II’s in the HIRT Tahoe and the Vantage Pro in the StormStudy Truck worked like we expected them to – perfectly. We’re ready for the next storm and with our Davis wireless repeaters and multiple weather stations, and we’re excited about the possibilities for sharing our data with the world again, this time from multiple locations in the storm’s path in real time.

Weather Check Quiz Question 3: What does the acronym CPI stand for?

Tech Tips: Davis Wind Cups vs Hurricane
Since Isabel (and now Marty, on this side of the US) has recently treated many of our weather stations to some very high winds, the question comes up: How high a wind speed is too high for our anemometers?

Well, if all we were dealing with was wind, Isabel didn’t pack enough punch – as John Van Pelt found – to overtax our anemometers. Our large cups are tested in our wind tunnel to perform up to wind speeds of 150 mph; the small cups are tested and “specked” at a max of 175 mph. We got some interesting field verification of these specs when a hurricane blew through the Caribbean a few years back. A customer called from an island to tell us that his large wind cups and his friend’s small wind cups, just prior to breaking, recorded in the 150's and 170's respectively.

However, in a hurricane situation, there is often more than just air hitting those wind cups. Hurricane force winds are full of debris, which can damage or break our anemometers. This is an unavoidable factor in measuring such high force winds – anything that would block debris would also block wind.

(We had another customer who reported sitting in his bathtub with his console, while a hurricane raged outside, , watching the gusts hit the 170’s, and then suddenly stop. Oh, it wasn’t the anemometer that broke; it was the roof on which the station was mounted that took leave of the rest of the house…)

Another factor in the durability of your anemometer is age. As with any piece of equipment constantly exposed to the sun, after several years, the plastic of the anemometer can begin to weaken from ultra violet degradation. For most weather station owners, this slight weakening would not affect the anemometer’s performance. But if you intend to subject yours to high winds (i.e., you live in hurricane country) and your wind cups are more than a two or three years old, you might consider replacing them before the next big blow.

Weather Check Quiz Question 4: In the San Felipe hurricane of 1928, at least 1,836 people died, mostly from the massive flooding from Lake Okeechobee. But an unknown number of those killed died because of a “side effect” of the storm. What was it?

A. Ignorance of electrocution danger from downed, recently installed power lines;

B. Typhoid poisoning from drinking well water contaminated by flood waters;

C. Bites from water moccasins which had already taken refuge in the trees people climbed to escape the water;

D. The collapse of a church roof caused by the weight of the entire congregation which refused to evacuate and instead chose to await rescue by angelic personages.

“Good Morning, Davyjonesville! The Forecast is For a Beautiful Day, Thanks To The Summer Upwelling and a Glorious Plankton Bloom!”
The San Francisco Chronicle’s science writer Carl T. Hall treated us to a fascinating weather – ocean weather that is -- story to peruse over our coffee last Sunday morning. One might think that weather conditions on the ocean’s surface are inconsequential to the “weather” a few feet down; in fact, one might think that the ocean, at a given location and depth, is so protected from “weather” that its inhabitants would face day after day of the same “forecast.”

However, as Hall explained, “A subtle change in wind speed and direction can nudge vast amounts of water in different direction, rippling all through the marine environment, affecting nutrient levels, fisheries, and military operations in ways scientists are only beginning to understand.”

But scientists are certainly trying. Hall reported that 14 institutions, coordinated by James Bellingham of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, spent a good part of the summer collecting vast amounts of data from the deep ocean canyon of Monterey Bay. By tackling the problem of measuring the always-changing tides, temperatures, and biology of the bay, the scientists embarked on “one of the most intensive studies of sea conditions ever undertaken.”

The idea is come up with a way to forecast ocean weather for purposes ranging from protection of endangered marine animals to military uses. But if predicting atmospheric weather is difficult, ocean weather is vastly more complicated. For one thing, the scale is much smaller; for another, marine life creates environmental changes. Where atmospheric meteorologist work with scales in the thousands of kilometers, and with consideration of rather static biological conditions with limited affect on weather, ocean meteorologists must work with scales in the tens or hundreds of kilometers, and with biological changes that can change the water’s physical and chemical state over a matter of hours. Where would you begin?

The very interesting story is currently on the Chronicle’s website.

Weather Check Quiz Question 5: According to the Chronicle story, one of the measurements scientists took was done with a device called a bathyphotometer. What were they measuring?

A. The depth to which sunlight penetrates enough to sustain photosynthetic plankton;

B. The presence of light-emitting dinoflagellates;

C. The growth rate of algae and kelp in relation to depth and tidal action;

D. The presence of bath products, such as Mr. Bubble, which inhibits underwater photography but leaves scientists feeling frisky and clean.

You're Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions

Question 1: James Rice took this photo (it’s actually a composite of three photos) of a storm hitting the pits area at Bonneville Salt Flats, near Wendover, Utah at Southern California Timing Association’s (SCTA) Speed Week in August. He wrote, “Thursday afternoon, a wind storm came through that immediately halted racing for the day. The weather station reported gusts over 60 mph, and sustained wind at 49 mph. While running around to secure everything from blowing away I shot a few pictures. Looks like a storm to me.”

Extra Credit: Of course there is! We wouldn’t make up such a thing! Our old friend Brian Yeaton, of the Weather Notebook, writes that fire can create weather. As the smoke from a large fire rises, a large cumulo nimbus type cloud -- made mostly of smoke -- can form at the top of the column. The plume itself can grow into a full blown storm because of the moisture in the smoke from burning vegetation. Brian writes that these ascending masses of warm, moist air can act very much like thunderstorms – complete with wind and rain. “Lightning from pyrocumulous clouds,” Brian writes, “can actually start other fires downwind from the original source. At the same time, rain from pyrocumulous clouds can sometimes put fires out. The biggest concern for firefighters when these conditions develop is wind. Downdrafts created by the thunderstorm conditions can cause fires to suddenly switch directions, and can even cause powerful tornados of fire.”

Question 2: We have never actually seen a breadbox, but imagine that it must be big enough to fit a loaf, rather than a slice, of California sourdough. But even if your breadbox will only hold a single stale bagel, our new gizmo will fit in there!

Question 3: If you said, “Consumer Price Index,” you are reading the wrong newsletter. This is weather, not economics!! As far as us weather geeks are concerned, CPI stands for Central Pressure Index, which estimates the barometric pressure in the eye of a particular hurricane. Since lower barometric pressure in a hurricane generally translates to higher velocity winds, the lower the CPI, the higher the winds. For a fun and informative website, check out Dr. George Pararas-Carayanns’s (he refers to himself simply as Dr. George P.C.) web pages on phenomena he clearly loves: hurricanes, hurricane storm surge, Tsunamis, and earthquakes.

Question 4: Unfortunately, it was C. As people discovered they could not outrun the flood waters on the road from Bell Glade to Pahokee, they climbed trees … which were already inhabited by other evacuating vertebrates unwilling to share. (Source:The Old Farmer’s Almanac: Book of Weather and Natural Disasters, by Benjamin A. Watson.)

Question 5: B. Dinoflagellates are “single-celled sea creatures of many types, some of which serve as an important marine food source.” And you thought they were dinosaurs who carried whips! That’s silly – dinosaurs didn’t live in the sea!

Who You Gonna Call?
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, you’ll find links for catalog requests on our web site at http://www.davisnet.com/contact/catalog.asp

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-News. Member participation is what keeps the E-News alive and kicking.

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


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