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Vantage Vue Brings Home a Prize from Consumer Electronics Show
We took our new baby out to Las Vegas earlier this month to show off a bit at the Consumer Electronics Show. And show off we did! Vantage Vue was honored with the CES Innovations Design and Engineering Award for 2010. We won this in one of the toughest categories: Personal Electronics. We hate to boast, but it is hard to be humble about that little weather station! It's making a big splash wherever it goes, even out in the desert of Nevada! Michael Padua, the Maverick Meteorologist of Naga City
David Michael V. Padua is the Executive Director of the Typhoon Preparedness Center in Naga City, Philippines, and clearly knows his weather (and weather stations!). He was recently featured in the The Philippine Daily Inquirer as the "One Man Weather Center." The "maverick meteorologist" has been a weather buff since childhood and may be one of the few who considers himself lucky to live in a place so well "blessed" with cyclones. He feels that people in the Philippines have had a " fatalistic bahala na [come-what-may] attitude" and his mission is to change that. His web site, Typhoon2000, is a resource to many in Naga City, the Philippines, and internationally. He tries to make information understandable so residents can prepare for storms. He even offers a text message updater for up-to-the-minute storm information. When a storm is threatening, Michael is constantly on his laptop. He manages to update his web site every hour when an area is threatened, compared with the four-times-a-day updates from the web site of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA). He has rustled a few feathers at PAGASA, with whom he swears he doesn't want to compete. But compete he does. Rather famously, back in 2004, he forecast that Cyclone Unding would indeed hit Naga City, while PAGASA said it would miss Naga City. Unfortunately for Naga City, Michael won that bet. As Michael likes to say, "Thundering Typhoons!!!"
Vantage Pro2s Doing Research in Barrow, Alaska Dirk Zwart of Linoma Software was happy to let us know that his company and ours are partners, of a sort, in an academic endeavor! Researchers at the Geography Department at the University of Cincinnatti have been doing climatological research in Barrow, Alaska, one of the most northern cities in the United States. Drs. Andrew Rettig and Richard Beck have set up 14 remote Vantage Pro2s to track data, and they use Linoma's software, GoAnywhere Director, to help get that data from the servers at the Barrow Alaska Research Center to the University. You can read more about it in a GoAnywhere Director case study, which prominently features photos of Vantage Pro2s at work in Alaska. According to Dirk, the station pictured on page one has been functioning flawlessly for a year! If that isn't enough, here's video clip (Windows Media file, .wmv) that shows just what those Vantage Pro2s are enduring.
>> Back to Menu Robert Crookston and his wife Colleen, who is a primary school teacher in Victoria, Australia, had a good question for this issue's Weather 101 topic. They wrote, "Why is rainfall measured in a length measurement (i.e. mm, inches) rather than a volume measure (mm per sq meter, etc)?" It's a good question! We decided to put it to our local weather dude Jan Null, of Golden Gate Weather. Here's what he had to say: "Before automated gauges, rainfall measurements were taken with rulers or calibrated measuring sticks. This became the standard and 'the way we have always done it.' In actuality, a tipping bucket takes a calibrated volume measurement and converts it back to a one-dimensional measurement, usually depth in inches or millimeters. The simplicity of this system is that it is relatively easy to apply simple conversion factors to derive a volume value. The most common of these is acre-feet, or the depth of water covering an acre." So really, we are measuring volume. The problem is that the volume you or I might need may not be standard or even defined. (If I want to know how much it has to rain to fill my 1,032.5 gallon pond, then volume is defined, but not standard. And do I need to know the exact dimensions of my vegetable garden or my hometown if I want to know how much rain has fallen on it?) Expressing rainfall in depth allows us to convert it to volume when we need to, or to speak a common language when we don't. (We'd like to be a fly on the wall when Colleen explains that to her primary students!) Robert and Colleen aren't the only ones to ask that good question. In fact, our local CBS television station, KPIX Channel 5, tackled it on their show. And the answer was most pleasing, in our not-so-humble opinion. Watch the video on their web site to see why! (Thank you, Paul Schandel for bringing that video to our attention!!)
To Calibrate or Not, That is the Question Sometimes our Tech Support wizards get a call from a user who thinks the data from his Vantage Pro2 or Vantage Vue seems a little off. Now, as much as we'd like to say our weather stations are always 100% perfectly correct, we know it is possible. However, we have enough experience with our stations' track record to be a little skeptical when the user wants to know how to calibrate his station to correct the variance. The first question we might ask is, how do you know your data is wrong? Sometimes the user says that he has compared his wind readings to the airport weather station, or his rain data to the local television weather report. We have to remind the user that some weather variables, such as wind and rain, and even temperature and humidity, are very much a product of microclimates. It may rain an inch in your backyard while the roof of the television studio 20 miles away is barely moistened. It's an understandable confusion for new weather watchers - and a good chance to introduce them to one of the most exciting features of personal weather stations - they tell you the weather here, not there. But sometimes the user will tell us that he or she compared the temperature to the outdoor thermometer mounted on the patio wall, or the rain to the depth of water accumulated in a coffee can or a nearby flower pot! We sometimes have to take a deep breath and remind the caller that he or she spent some hard-earned cash on a very carefully designed and well-tested weather station, and that the comparison should be going the other way: it's probably the thermometer on the patio wall that needs calibration! But that said, sometimes our stations do need minor calibrations. If you are certain that your station is reporting consistently high or low rain or wind values, or slightly off wind directions, your station can be calibrated to adjust for the error. (See our Application Note 30 for more information on proper siting and checking for accuracy.) In fact, if, for some reason, you can't mount your Vantage Vue ISS with the solar panel above the wind vane pointing due south, calibration of the wind direction reading on the console is required. The same is true if your Vantage Pro2 ISS must be mounted so that the anemometer arm is not pointing to true north. For both Vantage Vue and Vantage Pro2, you can calibrate wind direction, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. For Vantage Vue, you can also calibrate rain. Directions for these calibrations are in your manuals (also online at: Vantage Pro2 Console Manual, and Vantage Vue Console Manual ), but a call to our tech team before your decide to calibrate might be a good idea!
>> Back to Menu Vantage Vue Reviewers Like What They See Jesse Ferrel loves all things weather and is a long-time Davis weather station user. His Vantage Vue review on AccuWeather.com made us just glow with pride. He commented on how easy it is to install, calling it "one of the easiest installs I've ever done, at any price." (But then Jesse says, "I didn't even read the manual." Aaaackk! Don't tell our extremely hard-working Tech Writer!) He loved the small size and the price as well. We smiled at another excellent review, "Weather vain: ISS lands in Boca" done by Ben, the "SoFla Amateur Naturalist." What we like best? He called the ISS "a thing of glory!" (Sounds like we wrote that!) Dr. Duane F. Marble, of Florence, Oregon, suspects that we didn't mean what we said in last month's E-Newsletter about the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion being the "only all black airborne unit in the US Navy." "Navy?" asked Dr. Duane. Since he is Emeritus Professor of Geography at Ohio State University and a Courtesy Professor of Geosciences at Oregon State, and also the father of a Navy Captain with 22 years in the service, we knew we were caught in a big DUH! The Triple Nickels were Army, not Navy. While we're feeling foolish, Mike Achatz rubbed a little salt in the wound when he asked if we forgot how to count after he noticed this: "WeatherLink Hits 2,222: Two thousand twenty two!" Thanks Mike, for adding, "Another excellent newsletter!" to your comment about it being "either 2,022 or two thousand two hundred twenty two." Don't even ask us where the hyphens go. (Clearly, we don't write many big checks.) >> Back to Menu Keeping Your Debris Screen Where It Belongs "I live in Albuquerque and I am having the same problem with the screen disappearing. The first time I found the screen on the ground below the mast. I have done what Keith did with a piece of wire. It too disappeared. This it the third time, so I will order a new screen from Davis and glue the screen in place. I do not believe we have any 'bowerbirds' in this part of the country so I don't know what or who has taken the screen." Our tech wizards are okay with gluing in recalcitrant screens, but insist that you be very careful and not let glue drip into the cone hole and into the tipping bucket. Gluing down your tipping bucket will definitely affect its accuracy!
>> Back to Menu What do you think of the E-Newsletter?How can we improve? How do you use your Davis weather products? Email us at news@davisnet.com. Question 1: Michael's forecast might be for a bagyo. What is that? Bagyo is what a typhoon is called in the Philippines. >> Back to Menu Question 2: True or False: The village of Barrow, Alaska, which has grown to a bustling population of over 2,000, is creating a dangerous Urban Heat Island. Even though Barrow is not what exactly what most of us think of as "urban," the Urban Heat Island there is a reality and has raised concerns about threats to road and structures. This was demonstrated by researchers from the Geography Department at the University of Cincinnati. >> Back to Menu Question 3: One little raindrop just fell over Boonville, Indiana, and seeped into the soil. Just like that it went from rain to groundwater! Does that mean it is now part of the water table? No, not exactly, at least not yet. Right now, it is part of the surface layer and will probably settle into the zone of aeration, where there are nice, cozy little air gaps between bits of soil. This layer is just above the saturation layer, in which there are no gaps left. With enough rain, the zone of aeration can disappear and the whole area below the ground becomes saturated. Then our rain drop would have to change its title to "flood droplet." The water table is the boundary between these two levels of saturation, so you can see how it rises and falls with precipitation rates. Our droplet could also evaporate from the surface layer when the sun comes out (now it's "vapor"), or be drunk up by a plant to be transpired back into the atmosphere, or by a thirsty bird to be deposited into your rain collector, but it won't be "rain" anymore. >> Back to Menu Question 4: What is the rain shadow effect? B. The reason is orographic lift. (See the September 2009 E-news.) As the prevailing winds lift the air over a mountain, the air cools and precipitation forms. When the air is dropped down on the leeward side of the mountain, it contains less moisture. A famous example of this is the Atacama Desert on the leeward side of the Chilean Coast Range, the driest place on earth. The prevailing westerly trade winds pushing air over the mountains help to make the Atacama Desert very dry indeed - much drier than our own Death Valley. Parts of the desert have never had a recorded rain drop. >> Back to Menu Question 5: What is a simple way to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius? Well, we were hoping you knew one, because we sure don't! You have to subtract 32, then divide by 1.8. To go the other way, multiply C° by 1.8 and add 32. [C° = 5/9 (F° - 32)] Your best bet to carry a calculator at all times. >> Back to Menu Davis! What do you think of our new E-news format? 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 Davis E-News. Member participation is what keeps the Davis E-News alive and kicking. Well, that's it for this edition. You'll be hearing from us again next month! The Davis Weather Club E-Newsletter is published by Davis Instruments. Vantage Vue, Vantage Pro2, Vantage Pro2 Plus, Vantage Pro, Vantage Pro Plus, Weather Monitor, Weather Wizard, WeatherLink, WeatherLinkIP, Weather Envoy, and Perception are trademarks of Davis Instruments Corp. |
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WEATHER IN ACTION
