Home is where the heart is. This Weather Monitor II finds home atop a Thai water tank.

Although British radio engineer Sheridon Street never moves across the planet without his trusty Weather Monitor II, nicknamed Windy, the time has come to say goodbye to his old friend. Windy has been maintaining Sheridon’s weather data logs for about 20 years, and has done it from the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Oman, and, now, Thailand. Its current home is in Sansai, Chiang Mai, about 15 km north of Chiang Mai City Airport.

Sadly, although she is still going strong, Windy is going into retirement. She has been replaced by a shiny new Vantage Pro2 which arrived as a Christmas present from Sheridon’s wife.

(Windy, it’s a story as old as time. These new-fangled upstarts just think they can take over where the modest have toiled thanklessly. We should have a protest of some kind.)

Weather Check Quiz Question 2: In the last few months, the San Francisco Bay Area has been whipped by some unusually high winds. Weather reporters repeatedly said that the gusts, which reached speeds higher than 75 mph (120 kph), were “hurricane force winds.” Is this an accurate description?
(Click here for answers.)

TECH TIPS :

Repeating Ourselves on Repeaters

With Vantage Pro2's amazing transmission power, most users find that they have no trouble receiving data from the transmitter on the outdoor sensor array, what we call the Integrated Sensor Suite or ISS, even if it is way out behind the potting shed, next to the tennis court, just past the sheep pen. Without obstruction or heavy RF (radio frequency) interference, the ISS can transmit up to 1,000 feet (300 meters). With that kind of transmission distance, your neighbors can often put a console in their own front rooms and enjoy your data!

But sometimes even that distance is not enough. What if you want to put your ISS in the vineyard, a mile from your winery showroom where the console will be? What if you work in an office building full of concrete and glass, and want everyone in the building to be able to receive data from the ISS on the roof a few hundred feet away? What if you want to keep your console in your greenhouse, 800 feet from the ISS, but want to upload data to your computer in your house, another 500 feet away?

Our Davis engineers love nothing more than a "what if!" They've designed a series of solutions that make transmission distance almost limitless.

First, decide whether or not your Vantage Pro2 transmitter can do the job with the standard antenna it comes with. Sometimes non-obvious obstructions may make the transmission distance shorter. For example, if your vegetable garden ISS is only 400 feet from the console, but there is a small hill between the two, the data may not make it over the hill to your console. If your Vantage Pro2 can't manage on its own, one solution is to set up a repeater or a series of Standard Wireless Repeaters, Solar-Powered or AC Powered.

A repeater is both a transmitter, like the ISS, and a receiver, like the console or Weather Envoy. The repeater would be set up between your ISS and your console, such as on top of the hill. It would receive data from the ISS and transmit it on to the console. A repeater can also be used when the ISS is too far away from the console. You can even use a series of repeaters to pick up a transmission and send it to another repeater. The chain can be as long as eight repeaters!

For very long transmission distances, or when there is a great deal of obstruction or RF interference (such as an office building), you could use a long-range repeater. Wireless Long-Range Repeaters have two antenna connectors, so you can add either a Yagi Antenna (directional) or Omni Antenna (360-degreee transmission), or both, to your chain. By combining Yagi and Omni antennas, you can increase your transmission distance to 5,000 feet (1500 meters), or even 10,000 feet (3000 meters) in one direction!

Finally, remember that your Vantage Pro2 came with TWO transmitters - one in the ISS, the other in the console! You can set up your console to retransmit your data to another console or Envoy. (You can buy an extra Vantage Pro2 Console/Receiver without an ISS.)

The combinations are almost endless, but the end result is that we've almost never met an obstruction we can't go over, around or through! For more information, see Application Note 25. Our Tech Support Team can also help you decide the best way to set up your system.

Weather Check Quiz Question 3: List five sources of RF (radio frequency) interference. (Click here for answers.)


WEATHER 101:

Tornado: One of Mother Nature’s Worst Weather Threats

Of all the really terrible weather phenomenon, the king of terror has to be the tornado. Ferocious, home-tossing funnels that roar out of nowhere with little or no warning, have always been part of the American weather landscape. But when a series of killer tornados descended on Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Indiana and Tennessee on February 5, 2008, taking the lives of over 60 people, injuring hundreds and leaving countless people homeless, we all felt a renewed sense of the humbling power of Mother Nature.

Americans don’t have a monopoly on tornados. They have been reported on every continent but Antarctica, but Americans do win the “most tornados” prize. The United States has also developed a good warning system, but even the best system can only give minutes of warning in some situations.

Because tornados can do so much damage in so little time, it is perhaps the greatest wish of meteorologists to devise a way to offer more advanced warning to those in the danger zones. In the United States, the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, issues both categorical and probability forecasts for tornados.

When a tornado is possible, the Storm Prediction Center (along with the National Weather Service) issues a tornado watch. When the tornado has been spotted or is very strongly indicated, a tornado warning is issued. Once a tornado warning has been issued, people living in the warning area should go to a basement or first floor room of a sturdy building. A closet or bathroom might be the best spot. If there is an underground storm cellar, all the better. Drivers are advised to get their vehicles off the road and themselves to shelter – but not a highway overpass! Better to hunker down in a ditch. The key word is lower, not higher! Students should leave large rooms such as gyms; mall shoppers should get to a smaller interior room and avoid large open spaces.

We hope Mother has hit her limit for killer tornados already this year. We’ve already had enough.

Weather Check Quiz Question 4: True or False:
A. All tornados are visible because of their tell-tale grey and white spinning funnel.
B. In the Great Bend, Kansas, tornado of 1915, five horses survived when a farm was leveled, killing two people. The horses were found a quarter mile away, uninjured, all still hitched to the same rail.
C. If a tornado is approaching, it is a good idea to open the windows to equalize the pressure inside the house.
D. The sky often goes a sickly green or green black before a tornado.
E. You are so knowledgeable about tornados, you could do a whole crossword puzzle on the subject.

Extra Credit: You be the copy editor: Did we spell “tornados” correctly, or should it be “tornadoes”? (Click here for answers.)

MAILBAG:

Northern Lights in Vermont?

New Vantage Pro2 owner (thank you Santa!) Robert Linde and his wife moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Wolcott in northern Vermont about nine years ago. Since then, he’s enjoyed watching a mysterious weather phenomenon that he thought was only for Alaskans and other very far-north dwellers.

“We live on a hill at about 1,425 feet (434 meters), latitude 44.54N, longitude 72.71W. We have a clear view north and are about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Canadian border with Quebec. I've been fortunate to have experienced some incredible displays of the ‘waving curtain’ type of aurora along with the sound effects associated with them. I understand that there is another type of less active aurora that is a ‘brightening along the horizon’.

“We have clear view of distant mountain ranges before they drop off to the plains of Quebec. We have a beautiful view of almost the entire Northern horizon (about 180 degrees). On many a clear night the entire horizon is illuminated with an orange to yellow to red glow a couple of degrees above the horizon, back-lighting the distant mountains.

“At first we thought that this could be light pollution from Montreal (remember I'm from the Bay Area) but Montreal is quite a bit west of us and there are no towns/cities north of us with any large scale population. Besides, this light goes as far along the Northern horizon as we can see and is uniform for the entire view.”

Robert, we’re sure what you are seeing is the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, and we are very jealous! While we usually think of seeing the Northern Lights in Alaska or Finland, it is not unusual to see them in Vermont.

Auroras are caused by a combination of atmospheric gases, the earth’s magnetic field, and the sun. That’s quite a lot of astro-chemical-physics! But the shortest version is this: the sun fires off energetic particles that bombard the earth. The particles, called plasma or solar wind, interact with the earth’s magnetic field and send excited energetic particles into the upper atmosphere. Here, they collide with atoms and molecules of gases causing those molecules to emit visible radiation. Each gas emits its own range of colors – oxygen makes green and red, nitrogen looks red or violet.

The aurora borealis has been seen at much more southern latitudes than Vermont. In September 1938, the Northern Lights were so vibrant over London that terrified Britons thought Windsor castle was on fire! In fact, the aurora borealis has even been seen in the southern states, including Arizona and Florida. You’ll see the aurora most brightly during times of high solar activity. If you want a heads-up on when that is, a service from Space Weather Phone will give you a call (for $4.95 a month).

Want to see some cool photos? How about this one of the aurora borealis and the Hale-Bopp comet taken by Gustav Verderber. Just to prove Vermont is aurora territory, here are a few from further south Long Island, New York, by Tim Blanco, and another from even further south Maryland (We love Robert’s P.S.: “Thank you for making a wonderful USA-made product.” Thank you for noticing!)

Weather Check Quiz Question 5: How high above the earth is the aurora borealis?

Extra Credit: (An easy one!) The aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Light is seen in the northern hemisphere. What are the Southern Lights called?
A. Aurora asiatis
B. Aurora indialis
C. Aurora atlantis
D. Aurora australis
(Click here for answers.)

YOU'RE BRILLIANT!:

Question 1: About 40 minutes. Less than five if you are fair skinned. (See the chart on the NOAA UV page . (Back to stories.)