Weather Station Addition, Changes
As you may recall, we setup a Davis VantagePro electronic weather station last fall here at AccuWeather Headquarters in State College, PA. The data is available here.
After moving into my new house in May, I setup a sister station in my backyard; its data can be viewed here. The station is located just off screen left/bottom on the view from WeatherCam #1, which has also been re-established at my house.
It looks like it is right next to a small pine tree, but in reality it is a good 6 feet away, far over the "height/2" rule for rain gauges (the gauge must be half the height away from an object). The anemometer is not in a great position because it gets blocked by the trees and nearby houses. Davis sells a separate transmitter kit for a price (yikes), to enable you to mount the anemometer away from the main unit (ISS) but it does not provide any sort of mounting option that doesn't involve drilling a metal tripod into the roof. My aim is to mount it to my roof with a Radio Shack Vent Pipe Mount. I might not get it to be four feet above the roof, as they recommend, but it will be close. It should meet the meteorological standard height of 10 meters (30 feet).
Photo Of Station Taken Friday 7/14
As you can see on Google Maps, the stations are about 1 mile apart as the jet stream flies; 2 by road.
I did some maintenance last week on the AccuWeather station. The rain gauge had slowed, then stopped reporting rainfall. On close inspection, the gauge needed to be cleaned out. Birds tend to sit on the edge of the gauge, and, well, you know what birds do best. A little sink action and it was like new. Precipitation reports for at least a month prior are inaccurate; I need to add that to the station history page.
The Anemometer's New Location
The anemometer was also moved on the roof of the building. For a few months after we put it up, it was about 10 feet off the roof, on the "southern" side of the building. This wasn't optimal, but it seemed the only way to put it up at the time. In March, the pole it was on was moved and it took a place very low on the roof, where wind readings were cut in half until last week. Now, it has been mounted on the "northern" side of the building at a height of about 14 feet above the roof, which gets it about 4 feet above the roof outcropping on the northern side. The roof is probably 40-50 feet up so that puts it above standard height, but we should see some interesting wind gusts now.
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