Davis
Instruments Weather Club
June - July 2006
In This Issue:
WEATHER STATIONS IN ACTION :
Vantage Pro Helps Grain Growers Grasp Gains 
Farmers in Breckenridge, Michigan, have a nice advantage. This Vantage Pro is set up at the Michigan Agricultural Commodities (MAC) plant in Breckenridge, and its data is available to the MAC farmers with the click of a mouse. MAC buys, sells, and stores agricultural commodities throughout the United States and Canada.
“This plant in Breckenridge,” wrote Mark Sterling, Quality Control Manager for MAC, “handles enough grain each year that if we loaded just one train it would measure over 78 miles long. Our Vantage Pro’s data is used by our farmers for growing degree days and wind and rain records for spray record keeping and pest management. We have it connected with a broadband wireless internet link. Our grain plants also are connected with high speed internet. Train data then is uploaded in real time so that our main office in Lansing, our local office uptown in Breckenridge and the buyer can see the train in real time as it's loaded.”
We at Davis do love to eat, and therefore, we get a real thrill out of helping growers! One of our best farmer-friendly tools is the Agricultural/Turf Management Software Module, which allows growers to use their WeatherLink software to generate reports about growing degree days for specific crops and pests, evapotranspiration, leaf wetness hours, soil temperature hours, and crop water management.
No, no need to thank us. Just send us some of that sweet summer corn, via same-day express with ice-pack.
Weather Check Quiz Question 1: What is a growing degree day? (Click here for answers.)
Hold Your Breath, Vantage Pro2!
Rick Bray, the manager of operations for Bucks County River Country, in Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania sent us this photo of his Vantage Pro2 set safely way up high on an old bridge pillar overlooking the Delaware river. Rick’s customers, who enjoy the canoes, kayaks, rafts and inner tubes his company provides, also enjoy knowing what the weather’s going to do ahead of time.
Safe, huh? We don’t think our little weather station and its neighboring webcam were exactly clear on the fact that only pillars are left of the bridge – because the bridge itself was washed away in a flood in 1955. But that was years ago.
Well, you guessed it. The Delaware, like many rivers on the eastern side of our country, got more water this year than its banks could contain. It celebrated Independence Day by surging furiously through previously non-river territory.
Here’s a photo of that 50-foot tall pillar on July 4, 2006.
Rick told us, “We lost many out buildings, and equipment, and needless to say the weather station was banged up a lot. It appears that the solar panel was ripped off, and the rain gauge was ripped apart, too.”
But Rick was pretty impressed that while whole buildings floated off, the Vantage Pro2 stood its, uh, pillar, with relatively minor damage.
Never fear! A new solar panel, rain collector, and tripod will get the station whole again. We imagine Rick wishes it was that simple to get everything back in order at Buck’s!
WEATHER 101:
Cloud Greets Earthlings: “We Come in Peace”
Michael Owner, who claims his Vantage Pro is “looking forward (?) to the upcoming hurricane season,” liked the cloud article and photo in our last issue. It reminded him of this photograph he took from the Victoria-Vancouver ferry one evening last year.
“I saw a rather odd circular cloud formation. I've been meaning to ask about it. Can you explain to me how a cloud can do this please? My only thought is that the wind swirling around the mountains could cause it but I remain doubtful!"
What Doubting Michael has recorded is either a cleverly camouflaged flying saucer, or more likely, a classic lenticular (or altocumulus standing lenticularis) cloud. So named because they look a lot like a lens, they usually form downwind of a mountain. Moist air going over mountains tends to form waves and clouds like these form in the wave crest. They tend to stay in one place while the wind blows through them. Sometimes they stack up “like pancakes” – just like they were doing the day Michael snapped this great shot. (Source: Meteorology Today, C. Donald Ahrens)
To see a really pretty photo of a snowcapped peak (looks like Mount Fuji to us…) wearing an angelic lenticular sombrero, click on Ellie Crystal’s Crystallinks website.
Weather Check Quiz Question 2: True or False: Mount Fuji is a volcano.
(Click here for answers.)
Extra Credit: Are clouds in general and lenticular clouds in particular more likely to form on the leeward side of a mountain or the windward side? (Click here for answers.)
Want to Fly Among the Clouds?
A group of USC (go Trojans!) MFA and Engineering students have created a lovely computer game based on clouds! The game, named, yes, Clouds, is free to download. Playing it allows you to fly among the clouds, causing rain, cleaning the air, and becoming too relaxed and god-like to work for the rest of the day. Check it out.
Cloud Lovers: You Are Not Alone
The Cloud Appreciation Society knows just how you feel. They love clouds, and are not ashamed to say it aloud! Their “manifesto” begins thus: “WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.” Their website is full of cloud coolness, like a gallery, poetry, books, news, science, chat – you can even get cloud cufflinks at their Cloud Shop. Join ‘em and be proud!
And Every Real Cloud Lover loves his Vantage Pro2 Plus and WeatherLink. By watching the solar radiation and humidity data, as well as the cloud cover overhead, weather buffs can begin to truly appreciate the fact that Earth’s weather engine truly is the sun. Here’s the short version: the sun warms the earth, which in turn warms the air in the lower atmosphere. The warm air rises, expands and cools, and the moisture in it condenses into cloud droplets. Voila! A fluffy cloud that looks like a bunny rabbit.
TECH TIPS:
Help! My Vantage Pro2 Screen Went Blank!
Is your Vantage Pro or Vantage Pro2 console screen blank? If it has no outside data but says "Receiving From . . . " across the bottom, fear not. What's happened is that you've lost power and then regained it. When the station starts up again it goes to the first screen of Setup Mode, where it displays "Receiving From . . . "
To exit Setup Mode, press and hold DONE for a few seconds and viola, the station should return to normal. Your outside data will fill in over the next few minutes.
MAILBAG:
Yeehaw! Ride Em’ Rufous!
Barb Conine, of Wrangell, Alaska sent us this photo of two rare sights.
“We hardly ever see blue skies like this in our rain forest,” Barb says, “but what we've never seen before is the goofy hummingbird [see the little bit of red up there?] liking to sit on the wind vane. He actually was buzzing around the cups a bit but decided he liked the top.”
Barb’s had her system for four years, and had a Weather Wizard before that, but this is the first hummingbird thrill-rider she’s seen.
“This little guy seems to love it because he's up there nearly every night now. My husband came in laughing this morning saying there was a real switch [in wind direction] that sent him around in circles and he just rode it out. The rufous hummingbirds nest here up from southern California. They are here about four months of every year. We use between 30-40 pounds of sugar making nectar for them because we get that many birds. A real delight in our lives.”
That little red guy knows how to live: put away a several times your body weight in sugar, then go for a spin. Pass the Dramamine, please.
Weather Quiz Question 4: Pick the ones that are true: Hummingbirds… (More than one answer may be true!)
A. …can weigh less than two grams.
B. …can fly upside down.
C. …can live on nectar alone.
D. …can be killed by insects.
E. …can be found on almost every continent in the world.
F. …are believed to be reborn Aztec warriors.
G. …can’t walk.
H. …use spider webs in their nests.
(Click here for answers.)
Vantage Pro2 is Easy as Pie
Neil McCarthy, of Hanwell, Oxfordshire, UK, is just too happy with his new Vantage Pro2 and Weather Envoy. Not only did he get the system up, calibrated, verified in just a few hours, he also got his website up and running “in lightning time.”
“I use both the WeatherLink static HTML template and a Macromedia Flash based Weather Display Live package,” Neil told us. “The website also includes a Meso map and links to a real-time lightning strike site for the UK and all this was done from scratch! If the equipment wasn’t so easy to setup and operate I’d never have gotten all this done so quickly – especially as this is my first weather station and I have only limited internet skills.”
“Sophisticated products are often difficult to setup and operate,” Neil wrote. “In fact, I allowed myself about a month to get everything installed -- I was truly shocked that it took just a few hours to install and verify.”
A month? Why, we were able to put two songs on our iPod in a week less than that!
How Could We?
We left out one very important word in this sentence as it appeared in last issue: “Weather Wizards have been discontinued by Davis, so the MTFD was even luckier.” It should have read, “Wireless Weather Wizards have been discontinued by Davis, …” Although not one of our eagle-eyed readers noticed, we have to offer our mea culpas! Wireless is a word we hold near and dear to our Davis hearts so the fact that it disappeared from the copy proves that it must have been the work of a dire, evil, typographic force of nature. We do sell cabled Weather Wizard, but now our Vantage Pro2 line has taken on all the wireless virtues.
Record Rainfall Data Better Late Than Never
G. David Thayer, “inveterate meteorologist” who now lives in Sarasota, Florida is sorry he missed our Highest Rainfall competition. He says “it rains ‘cats and dogs’ quite frequently around Sarasota, sometimes it even rains ‘tigers and bears’!”
When he finally did get around to looking at his historical data, he found that rates of four to seven inches were downright common. But he did find some real extremes:
1. " 96 inches per hour on May 31, 2005. This one is probably bogus. The peak rate was recorded right at 6:00 a.m. EST. If I recall correctly, it had been raining pretty hard and when I noticed the rain gauge wasn't recording much, if any, rainfall, I went outside to see why. It was clogged with debris, and when I cleared out the debris, all the accumulated water ran through and made a HUGE spike in the rainfall rate figures. There was only 0.11 inches recorded in the entire ten-minute archive interval, so it's easy to see what happened.
“(This sort of thing has happened even to the US Weather Service. The rain gauge in Unionville, Maryland, recorded 1.23 inches in one minute on July 4, 1956, which stood as the one-minute rainfall record for many years. Then some investigators were able to demonstrate that it was probably caused by a plugged rain gauge orifice that suddenly cleared itself. The record then reverted to a 0.8-inch one-minute record from some other place, which is still a heck of a lot of rain--an average of 48 inches an hour, but the peak rate was likely far above that figure.)
“
2." 36 inches per hour on July 9, 2005. This one is not so easy to dismiss. The recorded rain rate occurred between 05:00 and 05:10 EST, and there is no way I was up that early. This was from one of the rain bands associated with Hurricane Dennis, which was cruising past Florida at the time. A total of 0.32 inches fell in that 10-minute period, and the wind gusts ran as high as 20 mph (high for my backyard). There were some other heavy showers from other rain bands that went over us, but that one was the most intense. I recall checking the rain gauge later that morning and could find no appreciable debris in it to block rain from being recorded. I remember that the rain was so intense it woke both of us (my wife and me). It sounded like large hail, it was so heavy. But we went back to sleep when it stopped rather abruptly.“
3. " A rate of 8 inches per hour was recorded on July 13, 2005, at 15:30-15:40 EST. This was in a very heavy thunderstorm between 14:30 and 17:00 EST. Rainfall of 0.57 inches was recorded in the interval above, and in the next one (15:40-15:50 EST) another 0.50 inches fell, resulting in a peak rate of 7.38 inches per hour. This was a very intense storm. Water ran about a foot deep in the street in front of our house for the better part of an hour. Total rainfall from the storm was 2.50 inches, of which 1.99 inches fell in a 50-minute period from 15:10 to 16:00 EST. This was probably the most intense thunderstorm I've ever seen, and I've been around for a while. The previous record-holder was a thunderstorm in Boulder, CO, that occurred June 30, 1962, which dropped about 1.4 inches of rain in 40 minutes and exactly 1.67 inches in one hour. (Yes, I've been keeping weather records since October 1960--I admit it!).“
"BTW, Jason Hicok [the Highest Rainfall winner] can keep his Davis hat. My entry was WAY too late!”
Late, but as usual, full of fun facts! Thanks David.
Weather Check Quiz Question 5: How does a Vantage Pro2 calculate rainfall rate? (Click here for answers.)
YOU'RE BRILLIANT!:
Answers to Quiz Questions
Question
1:
That’s farmer-ese used by today’s growers to know when a specific crop will mature. Plant development is very closely linked to heat – the corn in your garden will grow faster during a hot spell and slow way down during a freak cold snap. Those smart growers and horticulturalists came up with a way to calculate how much heat, expressed in units of growing degree days (GDDs), each crop needs to mature. The GDDs accumulate each day until maturation. Using GDDs, the grower can know when to plant and harvest. This same calculation can also tell growers when a specific insect larva will hatch – and therefore when to spray most effectively. GDDs are calculated by taking the average daily high and low temperatures of the day and comparing them to a baseline. A good description can be found on the website of R.L Nielsen, of the Purdue University Agronomy Department.
(Back to stories.)
Question
2: Oh, it really makes us feel bad to play such a cheap trick on our readers, who have been nothing but fair and kind to us. False. It is really THREE cones: Komitake, Older Fuji, and Younger Fuji volcanoes. Honestly, we feel awful. If you said true, you still get an A. Well, maybe an A-. (Back to stories.)
Extra Credit: Clouds in general form more readily on the windward side. As the air moves toward the mountain, it has to be lifted up over it. (This forced lift is called orographic uplift.) As the air is lifted, it cools, and when moist air cools, clouds form. On the other side of the mountain, the unstable air descends and warms. Since most of the moisture formed either clouds or rain on the windward side, the air tends to be dry. So, on the leeward side you tend to get clear skies and little precipitation. But lenticular clouds are the exception as they tend to form on the leeward side in the waves of air flowing over the mountain. (Source: Meteorology Today, C. Donald Ahrens) (Back to stories)
Question 3: When the water vapor condenses, there is a release of latent heat inside the cloud. So cloud formation warms the air. Clouds also emit infrared radiation at night, so cloudy nights are often warmer than clear ones.(Back to stories.)
Question 4: They are almost all true! Hummingbirds can fly upside down (for a brief time), but are terrible walkers. The smallest, the Cuban Bee Hummingbird, can weigh as little as 1.6 grams (1/14 of an ounce). They do use spider silk in their nests, and careless hummers have been killed by spiders. Praying mantids also eat them, (the Hummingbird Society's website has some sad photographic proof )
and a bee or wasp sting is usually fatal in such a tiny body. Many Native American cultures include hummingbirds in their lore, and Aztec warriors died believing that in the next life, they would enjoy the life of a brilliantly colored hummingbird. The only ones that aren’t true are C, (they need to supplement nectar with protein from insects) and E. (they are found only in the New World, mainly in the tropics). Check out the Hummingbird Society and while you are clicking around the Internet, check out the Journey North Hummingbird site which shows were hummingbirds are in their migrations.(Back to stories.)
Question 5: When you installed your rain collector, you probably noticed the little see-saw tipping bucket under the black rain collector. When the “up” bucket fills with water, it tips, releasing the water. The Vantage Pro2 measures the time between successive tips. Elapsed time greater than 15 minutes or only one tip constitutes a rain rate of zero. (Back to stories.)
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