Beaver Lake Weather Station

[Stump bumper]

The Weather Station is back up...http://ws.beaverlakeweather.com/wx.htm

[Anything that swims]

O

[jeb]

Cool. Bookmarked. I'd nominate it for being pinned!

[Quillback]

That is a great link, yes pin it!

[jeb]

I wish it had a current wind speed indicator. Odd that it doesn't. Did I miss it? I see the chart on the bottom, but that's not current speed.

[Quillback]

There's a wind speed circular guage in the middle top. It does not update, you have to click refresh. I wonder if it is a location that is sheltered from wind, as it is showing E wind at 2MPH right now and I know from looking outisde the wind is blowing harder than that. I looked at it last evening and it showed wind speed of 8 out of the East, and again the winds were blowing harder yesterday evening.

[jeb]

Odd. I see it now. I'm pretty sure it was not there this morning. Maybe they were calm winds when I looked. It was pretty still this morning before the sun came up.

[Quillback]

I'm getting a little concerned about that weather station. Right now it shows east wind at 7 MPH, but the weather channel.com shows wind in Rogers at 13 MPH out of the south with gusts to 18.

[Stump bumper]

The operator of the station will be on soon to explain the operation of the station his screen name is "kwhelan". If anyone has any pull with admin to get him in quicker please do, he is a great guy and can post updates from the river end since he lives on the river. Let's all give him a warm Ozark welcome.

[kwhelan]

Okay, what it puts on the website is the instant wind speed, not the average. Since wind is highly variable, especially on the lake, you are most likely seeing the low points. The station is mounted about 15 foot above my dock. There shouldn't be anything blocking it. Couple of things you can look at.

1. http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KARSPRIN5

Look at the wind speed graph on down the page, it will show you what it has done all day. You will see gusts to 22 and a much more inclusive picture as to what was happening on the lake today.

2. I created a new front page today at http://www.beaverlakeweather.com today if your browser supports flash (i.e. windows or mac but not ipod/ipad/iPhone) you can see the windspeed graph live as it happens. This page is still under construction, building it by hand. The other pages are generated by the weather software and are ugly and messy. Hoping to fade those to the background.

3. On the Graphs and Gauges page at the bottom there is a static windspeed graph for the last few minutes. Best place to probably look at it is the history on wunderground. If you compare my station to others in the area on wunderground you'll notice that it is comparable.

There are TWO current problems on the weatherstation. Bear in mind it is a real pain to get down and back up off from the dock.

1. Wind direction is currently not correct. When I put it back up the last time. It rotated on me and I didn't realize it until later.

2. Bird poop in the rain gauge it is not reading ANY rainfall for the last couple of months. That means when I do take it down I'm going to get drenched because the funnel is full of water.

There are a couple of SITING problems with the station that I cannot fix. If you look on the map. The lake runs NW to SE. The wind ALMOST always blows either NW or SE up or down the valley., seldom does it blow east or west, occasionally it blows due S or due N. This due to the fact it is sited down in the valley. Nothing I can do about that, I have no other open place on my property. As a matter of fact, I ususally look out the window in the morning and dress according to the direction the wind is blowing on the water rather than what the weather stations says, (its quicker).

The other siting problem is that sitting in the valley with a lake underneath it. When there is no wind, the humidity in the valley goes abnormally high. (you've seen fog over the lake). Well the weather station of course reads the high humidity and reports it. It is accurate for my location but it is not reflective of the actual humidity outside the valley. One odd thing that happens is that we'll get lake effect snow (never enough for accumulation) a couple of times a year when no one else got any snow. Its really weird when that happens.

One other piece of information. Not only is the data sent to wunderground, it is also sent to a network called CWOP. CWOP validates your weather station and I get a report daily which includes any measurements that are outside of the average of other stations. The data is then passed on the NWS and if I am correct, they use it in data modeling etc.

If you notice a problem, I am always open to addressing the problem. Please don't hesitate to E-Mail me at ken@whelanfamily.com, weather instruments are a pain in the behind. They break regularly. The Water temp sensor is battery only so if you see it reading zero drop me a line so I can replace the battery.

This weather station was for my own info. I had no idea anyone else was looking at the pages until Stump Bumper told me that he had followed the link from wunderground and then posted it. I'd have fixed it sooner after it went down if I had known. My next door neighbor was the only other one that I knew used it. (he complained I ignored him Ha).

I only posted to crappie.com and ultimatebass.com because someone I recently met got all excited when I mentioned I had water temp available. After he mentioned it to me, I went ahead and fixed the domain problems I had created when I was trying to save a little cash.

Thanks

kw