A specially equipped Vantage Pro2 provides weather data to firefighters in NSW, Australia, via mobile phone network.

Our Australian customer, Boztek sent us some exciting news: They have installed a Vantage Pro2 in Sydney Australia’s premier sports stadium, Telstra Stadium.

They have also built a few custom weather stations for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service which were used last year when a State of Emergency was declared ion NSW due to wild fires. (NSW is the state in which Sydney and Canberra are.)

“One of the wind fires was coming out of a very remote forest where it was too dangerous to have humans monitoring the extreme weather. We built a custom system that used the Australian mobile phone network for communications. This allowed fire chiefs, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to contact the station via a mobile text message and the station would text the latest weather stats back to their phone. We also set alarms for temperature and wind. When these alarms were triggered, the station would text a bank of mobile phones to alert them so fire fighters, fire trucks and aircraft could be moved to safety way ahead of the pending fire front. We also set the remote station to regularly send weather data back to the base via the mobile phone network so all weather data could be collated on a computer for later use in fire reports. Pictures of the stations in action can be seen here: Photo 1 , Photo2 , Photo 3 , Photo 4 .”

Wow, Boztek! Pretty soon you’ll have Vantage Pro2s answering your office phones and making coffee. We’re pretty far from NSW, but we do feel safer!

Another dealer, this time Martin Dvorak of the Czech Republic, tells us of another Vantage Pro2 station making sporting safter. This one monitored weather at the 11th FAI World Microlight Championship in the Czech Republic in August.

Seems you can’t go anywhere these days without a Vantage Pro2 watching the weather for you!

Watching Over Buda

Don and Jeannine Inbody, of Buda, Texas, sent us a link to their weather site. There is a nice photo of their Vantage Pro standing watch up on their roof. We added them to our Weather World 'Round page – until now Buda was unrepresented! Don also runs a WeatherBlog on Weather Underground. There are some nice photos there of the Inbodys and the beautiful place they call home. Now there is no excuse to not know what is going on weather-wise in Buda!

Roz Savage Rowing Attempt Thwarted by Rough Seas

We were sad to see that Roz Savage, whom we had featured in a past issue for taking a Vantage Pro2 along as she attempted row from California to Australia, had to abandon her attempt just 90 miles from the California coast. She may be on dry land now, but she vows to get her boat back and herself back on board soon. You can read the whole story from the San Francisco Chronicle.

TECH TIPS :

Davis Tech Support Guys Come to Your Living Room

Most of the maintenance you’ll ever need to do on your Vantage Pro2 is pretty straightforward. Removing the rain collector, for example, to clean it, or making sure the anemometer is seated correctly are easy enough (unless there are hornets in there…).

But occasionally, our team might suggest that your station needs a new transmitter board or temperature/humidity sensor. You could pack up your station and send it off to us to repair, or you could buy a round trip ticket (first class please) for one of our tech support team to come help you install it.

Or you could just click on our new video page to see a video of how it’s done! At the moment there are two videos, one to show you how to change out your transmitter board and another to show you how to remove and replace the temperature/humidity sensor, but more will be added.

(Brett Lane, our fearless tech support leader, asks that autograph and photo requests be sent to his agent in Hollywood…)

Weather Check Quiz Question 2: Uncle Joe says he really doesn’t care much about the weather because he spends all summer in his wood workshop designing chairs and tables. But Aunt Jan, after all four of Joe’s hand-hewn chairs collapsed, the last one with poor, portly Mrs. June sitting on it, bought him a Vantage Pro2 with WeatherLink. Why? (Click here for answers.)


WEATHER 101:

Is It a Plane? Is It a Spaceship? Is it Retinal Bleaching? No, It’s Green Flash!

Here in California, people love to watch the sunset over the Pacific. They ooh and ahh at the oranges and reds and violets, but what they really want to see, what all of us sunset-watchers long to see is the Green Flash. We’ve all heard about it: just as the sun drops below the horizon, the most dutiful watchers get to see a seconds-long display of a green, or even blue blob just above the spot where the sun has gone down. We’ve personally watched for it thousands of times, and were almost ready to say it must be some kind of urban legend or the result of one too many Pina Coladas, because no flash of green has ever bothered to show up for us.

But the Green Flash is a real phenomenon. It happens when a complicated set of atmospheric and viewing conditions exist that cause the atmosphere to behave as both a prism and a lens to our eye. The prism behavior refracts the light, bending it and sorting the light rays by frequency. Sunlight curves with the earth’s curvature, making the colors layer each other as in a rainbow. As the sun sets, the light has progressively more colors removed, first red, then orange, (like the song) until only the top layer of blue is left. As the sun slips down, it pulls its rainbow light blanket behind it, with the blue outer edge following last. So why don’t we see blue? Well, sometimes the flash is blue! But most often we see it as green because much of the blue light has been scattered, and because the eye tends to shift the color toward the yellow. But refraction and scattering and vision are only part of the equation. The other part has to do with the magnification effect of mirages. The Green Flash is partly a mirage, like the ghostly wavering water seen above a hot dry highway.

Green Flashes are real. They can be photographed, (here’s a great one!) and it seems everyone we know, besides our pathetic selves, has seen one.

Green Flashes are not a lot of things they’ve been assumed to be. Like, they are not bad omens or proof that the seer has the ability to discern truth from lies. They are not the result of liver disease or “biliousness.” (Cameras rarely complain of biliousness and don’t have livers.) It is not an after image caused by retinal bleaching from looking at the red/orange sun. (They can be seen at sunrise too. How can you have an after image of something you haven’t seen yet?) Nor are they are caused by light going through the ocean’s waves, and couples who see it together are not guaranteed lifelong love and happiness.(More on GF Fallacies from SDSU.)

So how do you see one? According to the Department of Astronomy at San Diego State University (Go Aztec Ice Hockey! Sorry, temporary keyboard outburst due to unrefracted parental enthusiasm.) there are simple rules to the game of Green Flash hunting.

The short version of the rules:

1. Know what you are looking for: small, inconspicuous, not necessarily green, not exactly a flash. Know where to be at the right time: Your eyes must be above the horizon – a condition met by standing or sitting on a beach. (But a mountain top, atop the Empire State Building, or an airplane work too.) And the horizon doesn’t have to be a sea or even water horizon, but it must be below your eyes.

2. The air should be nice and clear. No dust, smog, or pollution. Avoid high humidity spots and big cities.

3. Green Flashes can be “pretty puny.” Bring binoculars. Or look through your camera viewfinder if you have a telephoto lens. Don’t be dumb and look at the sun with binoculars before the sun gets right down on the horizon.

4. Pick the right spot. Find a place where the surface you are looking at is warmer than the air – like water in the wintertime.

5. Don’t look away just because the sun has set and, once again, you saw no flash. Keep looking for a few more seconds.

*6. Our own rule: no matter what, say, “Oh wow, did you see that incredible Green Flash?? No? Sorry you missed it, it was amazing,” just as the sun disappears.

The SDSU site has some good simulations of the Green Flash so you get an idea of what you are looking at.

If our explanation of the Green Flash is too mundane for you, there are some much better ones. Check out SDSU’s page, as well as ScubaGeek’s (“science that’s all wet”).

Weather Check Quiz Question 3: Surfer Bob told us that the reason we’ve never see the Green Flash is that we are too cool to take off our polarized lens sunglasses. Is he right? (Click here for answers.)

MAILBAG:

Beefy Boys Leftover Helps Keep Birds Off Rain Collector

Gloria Mercer, of Wellington, CO, came up with a pretty ingenious device to keep birds off her rain collector. She stuck an old bent tomato cage on it! “I cut off the top (largest) tier of the cage and also cut off about half of the legs, which point into the air. The whole thing just slides over the entire rain bucket.” Maybe she’ll find tomato seeds instead of bird droppings in there! Good idea, Gloria!

Weather Check Quiz Question 4: Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

Extra Credit: Tomatoes are the third most popular “vegetable” in America. Which two veggies are one and two? (Click here for answers.)

What Not To Do

Dick Jubinville wants to share a not-so-fun lesson he learned the hard way.

“A few days ago I discovered during a torrential downpour that my Vantage Pro was registering 0.00" of rain (WRONG !!! ). After a conversation with Davis technician, it was determined that most likely the reed switch was faulty, so a new one was sent out to me. Upon arrival of the reed switch a few days later, I headed back up the 250-foot pole behind the house where I have the weather monitoring equipment. I removed the equipment and brought it into the house to do the repair. I did not hear or see any ‘action’ from around or within the unit, and it being 110ºF in the sun that day, I saw no reason not to head for my repair bench in the basement. The rain catcher would not budge, so I used a little WD40 on the edges and, voila!, it began to release. However a familiar ‘buzzing’ was heard from within the unit, and upon removing the cone, I was greeted by three white faced hornets who went on the attack. Fortunately, I won that battle without any casualties. At the end of Game 1 it was Dick J: 3; Hornets: 0.

“Lesson learned: Never remove the rain catcher cone INSIDE the house unless it is very cold outside, like WINTER!! No matter how hot it is outside, go sit in the shade to first remove the cone. Bees love to make hives under the cone.”

Good work, Dick! (Hornets, next time wait until Dick takes the unit into the living room…)

The Mysterious Mr. Davis

Dave Bastacky of Mesa, AZ, had a suggestion for the e-news. “How about giving us the history of Davis Instruments and who is the ‘Davis’ behind Davis Instruments?”

Well, Dave, Mr. Davis is long gone from our organization, and he was never into weather anyway! Our owners, who met in business school, purchased Davis Instruments when it was a marine products only company back in the 60’s. Among the items was a really great, lightweight sextant Mr. Davis had developed. (They were so light and easy to use, the USN stocked life boats with them during WWII.) Many more marine products were added over the years, and boaters around the world know our name and use our products.

Then Davis Instruments started making Digitar weather stations – a likely offshoot of marine products. From there our weather products got fancier and more accurate, with the Vantage Pro2 being the latest in the evolution. (We still have some original Digitars around here and they look pretty snazzy for antiques!)

The weather stations actually led to Davis’ third product line. Our engineers realized that the anemometer on a weather station is a sophisticated counting machine, and the same engineering could be applied to count axle turns as well as wind cup spins. Our automotive line was born and we now also make a range of fleet and consumer automotive products. Our little CarChip, which plugs into the OBDII port of newer cars and provides driver and engine data is the latest addition to that line.

So we all wear three hats around here – marine, automotive, and weather. Mr. Davis would be amazed to see where is light little sextant has led us! We are still a small company and one of those rare manufacturers which actually manufacture their products right here in the U.S. Our engineering, sales, and support teams are all on site as well, allowing a great deal of teamwork and communication. We have employees who have been here since day one. We also have distributors all over the world, and they feel like our extended family.

Thanks for asking, Dave. It’s fun to look back and see how far we’ve come!

Old Anemometers Retirement Home

Click here to see what our "mad scientist" engineers do in their spare time…

YOU'RE BRILLIANT!:

Question 1: Sure it helped! According to Camping and Wilderness Survival: The Ultimate Outdoors Book by Paul Tawrell, it was a pretty good device for predicting storms. When bad weather is near, the air pressure goes down and the atmosphere becomes clearer. High atmospheric pressure with stable and dusty air means fair weather. (Back to stories.)

Question 2: Aunt Jan knows something about furniture making that Joe seems to have forgotten. Wood swells and shrinks with the weather. Wood will always become as dry as the air is.

Joe hauls his lumber up from the humid south to his workshop in the north. Once there, the wood will continue to lose moisture until it reaches equilibrium moisture content, or EMC. Both the temperature and humidity continue to affect EMC. But in that neck of the woods, the humidity is not exactly stable. In the hot, humid summer months, wood swells across the grain as it takes in moisture to reach EMC. In the dry, cold winters, it shrinks. Uncle Joe’s designs failed to allow for the changes in the wood affected by the weather, and poor Mrs. June, with her bad knee, had to pay the price. WeatherLink can show EMC using historical data of temperature and relative humidity. Or Joe could refer to a chart in Application Note 22. (Back to stories.)

Question 3: Well, we are pretty cool and sunglasses are requirements of the Super Cool Club. But Bob, dude, you’re still wrong. According to the SDSU site: “Sunglasses in general decrease the brightness of the retinal image, so they might diminish the shift in perceived color due to retinal bleaching, and make some flashes appear yellow rather than green. But the effect is probably not large. The polarized lens angle is a strange one. The setting sun is essentially unpolarized, and so is the nearby sky. Polarized lens might darken the sea surface slightly; but this would, if anything, help improve the contrast between small flashes and their surroundings.”

“So there,” we snip, peering cooly over the tops of our Ray Bans. (Back to stories.)

Question 4: Depends on who you are! If you are a botanist, a tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant, which makes it a fruit, or more precisely a berry!

But if you are a chef, you would call it a vegetable because it is not as sweet as most fruits and therefore would be better on your appetizer or entrée list than on your dessert list. (But what about our famous pot luck addition: chocolate cake with zesty tomato filling and green tomato crème frosting? Anyone?)

But then if you are a lawyer, you'd have to go with the United States Supreme Court which actually did issue a ruling in 1873 on the burning question. The verdict? Vegetable (for the purpose of levying a tariff.)

Finally, if you are a school child, you’ve got to go with vegetable too. That way ketchup counts.

So its fruit: 1, veggie: 3 (Source.) (Back to stories.)

Extra Credit: Potatoes (preferably deep fried with tomato ketchup) and lettuce (with sweet cherry tomatoes and Tomato Catalina dressing?) (Back to stories.)

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

Davis!
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 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.

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