In This Issue:

WEATHER STATIONS IN ACTION:

• Vantage Pro2 Enjoys Spectacular California Sierra Views
• Warning: Graphic Photo of Downed Vantage Pro!

  WEATHER 101:

• Exclusive: A Rainy Day Chat with a VP2 Console
• Dirty Air Means More Baby Girls
• How’s the Weather World ‘Round?
  
  TECH TIPS :
• Woodpecker Household Tip: Mike’s Vantage Pro2 is Perfect for Acorn Storage!
  
  MAILBAG:
• NOAA’s Rainy Day Fun
• Quiz Quibbles
• Mathew’s WeatherBus Keeps Making the News!
  
  YOU'RE BRILLIANT!
• Answers to Quiz Questions
  
  
WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
• Davis!
  

This photo just might end up in one of our catalogs, but we thought you should be the first to enjoy it!

Dennis Mattinson, an Air Quality Specialist (AQS)at Fort Independence, CA, in the Eastern Sierra, sent us this gorgeous photo of his Vantage Pro2 at work.

“As an AQS,” Dennis wrote, “I manage both a professional met station and a PM10 monitoring station. I have wanted to set up a professional grade met station at my home in the Alabama Hills at the base of Mt. Whitney. In November of 2005, I accomplished this goal. Using your Vantage Pro2 gear and some components from my work environment; the station labeled AH-1 is now operative.”

Dennis uses the data from his professional station, the Vantage Pro2, and from the National Weather Service to provide a daily forecast service for the Owens Valley/High Sierra Mountains.

“There are so many micro-climates here that the VP2 data is important because of its location at the base of the mountains at an elevation of 4500 feet,” he told us.

(Dennis, are there any job openings for newsletter editors in your area?)

Weather Check Quiz Question 1: Back in 1929, Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US, had an elevation of 14,194 feet but in 1988 it measured 14,505 feet. Is it growing? (Click here for answers.)

Warning: Graphic Photo of Downed Vantage Pro!

Nobody loved Wilma. Except maybe the Vantage Pros in her path, who found the wind and plummeting barometer readings just dandy.

Larry Cohen put his Vantage Pro right in the path of Wilma in his backyard in Davie, in Broward County, FL, which took the most direct hit from the hurricane. Too bad his fence was not as tough as that VP!

“I just wanted to let you folks know how astonished I am at the beating my Vantage Pro took during Hurricane Wilma and how it survived without a scratch! Both the main unit and the anemometer were securely bolted to a wood fence, but the entire fence came crashing down right on top of the VP unit and the separate 25-foot mast to which the anemometer was attached. The metal mast bent in three places, but not one hair on the VP or the anemometer was even touched!!”

Attaboy, VP. Fence, you let us all down…

Another Vantage Pro owner left his station running while he and his family were evacuated from Cameron, LA to Dallas before Hurricane Rita. Burt Sammis told us that when he returned home, he expected to see his station completely destroyed.

“I was amazed that not only was it still there but working. The 4 x 4 post on which it was mounted was at a 45 degree angle.”

Amazing what 130 mph winds can do!

And Chris Maltese shared his Vantage Pro2 and Weather Envoy data from October 24, 2005, the day Hurricane Wilma swung by his house. The barometric pressure plummeted from 1002.7 millibars at midnight, to 954.5 millibars at 10:15 in the morning. It was back up to 1002.9 by 5:45 -- a round-trip change of almost 100 millibars! That’s a very wild ride in barometric terms!

If your Davis weather station does incur injury in the line of duty, we’ve got our Tech Support team ready and willing to do triage, as well as repair services. You can reach Tech Support at (510) 732-7814 or support@davisnet.com.

Weather Check Quiz Question 2: If 130 mph winds will take down a 4 x 4 post, can a Vantage Pro or Vantage Pro2 anemometer really be expected to survive? (Click here for answers.)

We always love to get the “raining cats and dogs” message on our Vantage Pro2 console, despite the fact that it always happens on the dreariest of rainy days. When the rain drops start pounding the roof and windows, we always head for the console to see those the numbers appear on the bottom of the display.

How does it do that? Well, the Vantage Pro2 rain collector directs the rainwater down onto the tipping bucket. The “up” bucket fills, gets heavy and eventually tips the teeter-totter-like unit, spilling the collected water. By counting the number of tips over time, the VP2 handily figures out just how much rain is falling. (That’s because its calibrated so that .01” or 0.2mm of rain will cause the bucket to tip.) It sends the data in neat electronic packets to the console.

But what exactly does our Vantage Pro2 mean by “Daily Rain” and “Rain Rate?” What about “rain storm,” “monthly rain,” and “yearly rain”?

We went right to the source and asked our own VP2 console. We found her answers enlightening and fascinating! (Our coworkers seemed equally fascinated. Hey, haven’t you ever seen an investigative reporter talking to a highly intelligent machine, we mean witness?)

Weather Club E-News: Ms. Console, just what do mean by the term “Rain Rate”?
Console: It’s the rate at which the rain is currently falling, you ninny. I don’t want to be rude, but you are asking a really dumb question.

WCEN: Hey, we asked a reasonable question. In the past you’ve told us that the rain was falling at an inch an hour, yet our parking lot remained unflooded.
C: Oh, now I see where you are going. The rain rate displayed is instantaneous – almost real time. If I tell you it’s raining at a rate of one inch per hour, I mean that if it kept raining at this rate, you’d see an inch of rain in an hour. It could be just a momentary downfall – or a lull! If you could try to exercise a touch of patience, you’d see that the rate might change every time a data packet is received from the rain collector sensor, which is every ten seconds.

WCEN: So is “daily rain” the amount of rain that fell in the last 24 hours?
C: Not exactly. A day for me starts at midnight. I know when you arrive at your desk so I guess that a day for you starts somewhat later. (Ahem.) I start totaling the rainfall at midnight, and I keep adding it up for 24 hours. But if you must know how much rain fell over the last 24 hours, just check out the ticker at the bottom of my display.

WCEN: What if we have a big rain storm, and we want to call our friends in Seattle and brag?
C: Well, I don’t know what you call a “big rain storm,” but I call it a storm when I get two tips, and it takes 24 hours without a tip to call the storm over.

WCEN: So you might call a .02” total rainfall a “storm?” Snort.
C: Laugh if you like, but I’m not a psychic console. Unlike humans, I am always ready to work. Remember, every big storm starts with .02” of rain.

WCEN: We see your point.
C: So I let you decide if the storm was big or small. Just press the RAINDAY button and I’ll tell you how many inches or millimeters of rain have accumulated since the storm started. You know, I can tell you way more about the rainfall. For example, press RAINYR three times and I’ll tell you how much rain you’ve had since the beginning of your rain year, which you’ve designated in the set up screen. I can tell you how much rain you’ve had in this month, and I’ll graph it for you if you are more a visual learner…

WCEN: Okay, sounds great, but what if we just want to know…
C: … and if you’ve provided me with solar radiation sensors, I’ll tell you all about the current, monthly, and yearly evapotranspiration. And my accuracy on all this data is pretty impressive, if I do say so. Let me work with WeatherLink and you’ll be flooded (little weather device humor there) with rain information!

WCEN: Hey, what if we just want to know if it’s raining?
C: Um, okay. How ‘bout if I show you a little umbrella? Will that be clear enough for you?

WCEN: Yes. Thank you.
C: Can you go away now? I have some very important data coming in, a storm is coming, hum’s up and the wind is shifting…

Weather Check Quiz Question 3: How much rain does it take to get your Vantage Pro2 console to tell you “IT’S RAINING CATS AND DOGS?” (Click here for answers.)

Dirty Air Means More Baby Girls

Here’s a mystery for all fans of natural phenomenon to ponder: when air pollution gets worse, more girls are born. According to a story in the October issue of Nature, a team of scientists lead by Jorge Hallak from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil has discovered that 48.3% of the babies born in the least polluted areas of the city were girls, while 49.3% of the babies born in the most polluted areas were girls. The researchers calculated that, in the polluted areas, 1,180 more babies would have been boys had the birth ratios been the same as in the least polluted area.

Why? Hallak thinks it could be that pollution is a reproductive stress, such as natural disasters and other crises which tend to skew the birth ratio toward girls. It seems that Mother Nature turns up the heat on long term repopulation by producing more females when things look grim for the human race. But Hallak says that might not be the whole story because his team’s early evidence points to changes in sperm quality and quantity caused by air pollution – a phenomenon that has been seen when men are exposed to chemicals.

Well, women, if we don’t get our global air pollution under control, it looks like we may have to take on the lion’s share of air clean up as well as the housecleaning…

How’s the Weather World ‘Round?

If you haven’t been around the world lately, you need to check in to our Weather World 'Round page. We’ve got Davis stations reporting data from every corner of the earth including Kaimiti, Niue Island; Mui Wo (Lantau Island), Hong Kong; Siglufjordhur, Iceland; Kuwait City, Kuwait; Dalheim, Luxembourg; Moscow, Russia; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Istanbul, Turkey. The United States is very thoroughly covered, including Tamuning, Guam; and Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.

Jan Thierman, whose Vantage Pro2 uploads to his Almere, Netherlands page, reports that his data is also already being used as local information for the Radio 2 (one of Holland’s most popular radio stations) weather reporter.

“Even my wife became a daily user because of the very accurate short term forecast!” Jan told us.

You can always find something interesting on that page. For example, check out Lighthouse Weather in West Patterson, New Jersey with its fun live-stream lighthouse cam on the homepage and virtual Vantage Pro2 console.

TECH TIPS:
Woodpecker Household Tip: Mike’s Vantage Pro2 is Perfect for Acorn Storage!

Michael Morrelli must have been a very good boy this year!

“Santa came to my house on Christmas Eve,” Michael wrote. “My wife asked him to bring me a Vantage Pro 2. He did!”

Michael was certainly happy with the gift, but he foresees that his feathered friends, specifically the woodpeckers who live near his Sacramento, CA home will find the rain bucket just ideal for storage of acorns.

“The woodpeckers put acorns in every orifice that looks good. I have a TV mast that is filled from the ground-up. They are also pushing the acorns under my shingles.”

Michael asks if a mesh covering, such as window screening, over the mouth of the rain bucket would be a good idea.

Our Tech Team, however, says that mesh is not a good idea. Although it certainly would prevent acorn-access, it would also no doubt affect the amount of rain that actually gets to the tipping bucket. The rain collector and tipping bucket are carefully calibrated, so anything that impedes the water will skew the data. They suggest, instead, that Michael find ways to keep Woody and his pals from landing on the bucket in the first place, such as installing bird tape or spikes (available as such sites as Absolute Bird Control) around the outside of the collector.

Brian Lemieux of Pinellas Park, FL has another problem with wildlife enjoying his Vantage Pro. While doing his routine maintenance, Brian removed the rain collector to a welcoming committee of angry hornets.

The little critters had built a nice, cozy nest underneath the rain collector. (See those nice little multi-unit nests under the shelf in the photo above?)

“One nest was in an unusual spot,” Brian recalls. “Rain could drip down on the nest anytime it rained and tipped the tipping bucket. So every other measurement would drip down on the nest.

Look out for the heavy rain showers!” I hope the queen fired the nest’s building inspectors…

Weather Quiz Question 4: We were stung by a paper wasp once. As the stingee, what can we know for sure about the stinger? Hint: there could be more than one!
A. It died after it stung.
B. It was a female.
C. It was not liked by local gardeners and farmers
D. It stung out of viciousness.
E. It will not survive through the winter. (Click here for answers.)

MAILBAG:
NOAA’s Rainy Day Fun

Jan Null, of Golden Gate Weather Services, sent us a note about NOAA’s “awesome new site for precipitation analysis. Be sure to look at some of the sub-maps (i.e., California/Nevada) under location. We enjoyed clicking merrily around the map and thought you might enjoy it too! Thanks, Jan!

Quiz Quibbles!

Sou’wester lore: Clayton Philbrook, who identifies himself as a “fisherman with a three-hundred-year family history in New England,” wrote to tell us that we were just a bit off the mark in what a sou’wester (November 2005 issue) is, in terms of fishing, not weather. He says, “the hat, and only the hat, is called a sou'wester.”

We asked if he had any idea why and he came up with a good guess: “My guess, and it's only that, is you would wear the coat/jacket anytime you wanted to stay dry but would really need the hat when it blew NE, the usual direction for rain around here.”

We’re not ones to argue with a New England fisherman!

Storm surge cause: In several of our latest issues, we debated the cause of storm surge. We noted that there is a difference of opinion over whether the cause of the flooding associated with storm surge from hurricanes is primarily caused by pressure or wind. We concluded that more meteorologists contend it’s wind. But Pete Engels, of East Charleston, VT is still not convinced.

“It may be that storm surge in a hurricane is primarily due to wind, but I wonder. I spent many years sailing on the East Coast, from Chesapeake Bay to Nova Scotia, and points in between. Many, many times I have observed that a passing low pressure system has a significant effect on tidal height. In the Chesapeake, where normal summer tides may be no more than a foot, the low pressure from a storm offshore frequently raises and lowers the tide one to two feet more. In coastal New England, it is well known that low pressure can raise the tide level much more--three to six feet is common, even when the wind is not all that strong (perhaps 30 to 40 knots).”

Pete would like a more authoritative explanation. Have you got one?

Rain in rain cloud, (oops): Two sharp-eyed readers, Martin Gunther of Papua, New Guinea, and Len Sinfield of Canada, spotted a very erroneous error in our last issue.

Len wrote, “Being a Canadian and knowing about metric, I couldn't help but notice right away the error in the answer for Quiz Question 2. It stated that the amount of water in the droplets in a cubic centimetre (note Canadian spelling of centimetre and metre) of cloud would weigh about one gram. I'm sure it should have said per cubic metre. The mass of one cubic centimetre of water weighs one gram.”

Of course, Len is right!! That “centi” just sneaked itself in when we were not looking…

Weather Quiz Question 5: Can you drink untreated rainwater? (Click here for answers.)

Mathew’s WeatherBus Keeps Making the News!

Young meteorologist Mathew Pace, owner of the WeatherBus (see our June 2005 issue) dropped a note to tell us that he and his bus were the stars of a local news report. He put a copy of the interview on his website.

YOU'RE BRILLIANT!:

Question 1: No. But our ability to accurately measure elevations is! Since 1929, we’ve gotten a much better handle on the exact shape of the Earth, and a new coordinate system, NAVD88, was established in 1988. Check out Answers.Com, and the United States National Geodetic Survey, which also has some cool aerial photos of recent hurricane paths.
(Back to stories.)

Question 2: Absolutely! Our anemometers are tested in our own wind tunnels so we know what they can do. Anemometers with small wind cups have a reliable high-end range of up to 175 mph (150 kts, 282 km/h); with the large wind cups they’ll quite handily handle 150 mph (130 kts 241 km/h) winds. (Large cups come standard because they can report very low wind speeds; you can order small cups if you live where the wind is always whipping.) Usually, if unit stops reporting wind data, it’s because the support (like Larry’s fence) has given way (or blown away…), or because something in the very plentiful supply of wind-borne debris has hit the anemometer and broken it. We personally know the engineers here at Davis, and we’re still impressed that they could design a device that is that light and free moving, yet that tough! (Back to stories.)

Question 3: 0.3 inches (7.6 millimeters) per hour. Or the presence of poodles and tabbies.(Back to stories)

Question 4: B and E. Males can’t sting (the stinger is actually a modified egg-laying structure); and only next year’s queen survives the winter. The founding queen along with all the workers and males will die in late summer.
Paper wasps and other hornets and wasps can sting many times, but never do it except in defense. And farmers and growers know that despite their not-so-nice qualities, they are very good for the ecosystem because they eat caterpillars and other crop-destroying insects. The Everything About website has lots of good info on these love-‘em-if-they-don’t-come-near-me guys. (Back to stories.)

Question 5: Sure you can. But the real question is, is it a good idea? And the answer is: depends on where and how the water was collected and how thirsty you are. On the Argonne National Laboratory’s (one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest research centers) "Ask a Scientist" page, the Ph.D’s duke out this question without much consensus. Some say it is fine if it is caught in a sterile bowl, others say it is fine if you don’t mind drinking pollutants, acid, and insect parts. The problem is that while only water is evaporated and therefore pure, when the water falls through clouds just about any old thing in the atmosphere can become attached to it. We think a nice filtering system is in order if you think you may have to depend on rainwater for drinking! (Back to stories.)

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 URL's, 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!


Vantage Pro2, Vantage Pro2 Plus, Vantage Pro, Vantage Pro Plus, Weather Monitor, Weather Wizard, WeatherLink, Weather Envoy, and Perception are trademarks of Davis Instruments Corp.