Today, I added the World Weather Extremes page. A reminder to be grateful you’re not THERE!
Happy CoCoRaHS anniversary!
Today marks three years since I started recording CoCoRaHS — Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network — daily observations, missing only one day so far. Today was an observation of 11 inches of snow in the field, 5.7 on the snowboard, and water equivalents of 0.69″ on the board and 1.55″ in the field measurement. That’s a lot of water!
Milestone: snowpack gone
Not as exciting as “ice out” on the big lakes, but today was the first day I didn’t bring out the snowpack ruler since winter started. Spring is on its way!
A glitch in the matrix
An update to the GW1100 firmware, version 2.3.1, enabled the gateway to “see” the WH32 (indoor temp, humidity and pressure) sensor instead of the built-in T&H sensors in the GW1100, and made that option the default. After the update, the calibration settings for the barometer appeared to change on their own, and the resulting reported barometric pressure was off. A quick search of the great posts on wxforum revealed this was a known issue and provided a fix: disable reading the newly-available WH32. Done!
Weather Band webinar: Winter Lake-Effect Systems: Scientific and Educational Adventures to Further Our Knowledge and Prediction of Lake-Effect StormsWeather Band webinar:
On the 17th of this month, I attended a webinar on Lake Effect Systems and the studies going on. A number of distinguished meteorologists taked about the team effort to study LES on Lake Ontario a few years ago. The PhDs gave great credit to their hard-working undergrads who braved difficult winter conditions to set up and manage all of the tools and instruments and trucks and vehicles to gather all of the data. While the technical details were beyond my current understanding, the core ideas were quite accessible and interesting.
Hosted by the Weather Band, a group of “weather enthusiasts,” mostly non-meteorologists, run by the American Meteorological Society.
ChatGPT can imitate that weather person you can’t stand
64.2°F, 99% RH, overcast and raining, no wind, barometer 29.824 inHg
Prompted with the data and the request to report it like a friendly weather report, Chat GPT responded with this:
“Well, hello there, folks! It’s your friendly weather reporter here, bringing you the latest scoop on what’s happening outside. So, grab your umbrellas and raincoats because it’s a bit damp out there!
Currently, the temperature is a comfortable 64.2 degrees Fahrenheit, making it just right for those who enjoy a mild climate. But don’t forget, it’s feeling quite humid with a relative humidity of 99%. That’s a whole lot of moisture in the air, so you might want to keep a cool drink handy to stay refreshed.
Now, as you glance out your windows, you’ll notice that the skies are dressed in a cozy overcast blanket. Those clouds are working hard to keep that sunshine at bay, so you might want to postpone any sunbathing plans for now.
But wait, there’s more! The heavens have opened up, and we’ve got some gentle rain making its way down. It’s the kind of rain that’s perfect for a cozy day indoors with a good book or a hot cup of cocoa. No need to worry about strong winds today – the air is still and calm, giving you a peaceful and serene atmosphere.
And for those of you who like to keep an eye on the pressure, the barometer is reading a steady 29.824 inches of mercury. So, it looks like our weather pattern is holding steady for the moment.
Remember, folks, a little rain never hurt anyone! So, grab your rain gear, find a cozy spot, and enjoy the soothing sounds of nature’s orchestra. That’s all from me, your friendly weather reporter. Stay dry and have a wonderful day!”
I think I’ll stick with just the facts. Or, I might just find a cozy spot, grab my umbrella, a cool drink, a good book and a hot cup of coffee and enjoy my day!
Technical Difficulties
Due to operator error (that’s me!), the weather page was wrong from around 730 pm EST last night until 6:20 am EST this morning. The site generator was inadvertently set to “Simulator” mode. We regret the error.
Cleaned WH41 PM 2.5 sensor
When reviewing my annual logs, I noticed the PM 2.5 detector, an Ecowitt WH41 model, dropped off in readings in August, and was pretty consistently low for the rest of the year. I visited the WxForum and found an article suggesting that the air chamber could be clogged and needed regular clearing. Sure enough, I took the device apart and found debris in side, and what might have been a thin leaf stem stuck in the fan. Cleaned and blown out, the device returned to service, readings immediately started to show more interesting behavior. Hope that fixes it!
First weather station purchase
After some study on the wxforum.net, and inspired by the now-retired weather station at contoocook.org, I made my first cautious weather station purchase on April 7th, 2021. I ordered an Ecowitt radio-to web gateway GW1000 and a WH31 Temperature and Humidity sensor.
My caution came from notes I had seen on the sometimes difficult task of getting the gateway to communicate with the home router, as it only communicated on the 2.4 MHz band. Worse, for that initial connection, you needed to use a phone app to connect to the gateway and supply it with credentials to connect to the network. What could go wrong? Well, lots, but it didn’t, at least for me. My concerns were unwarranted, as the connection went smoothly, and a new hobby was launched.
Experiments with WordPress 5.x and Gutenberg
This is a Heading
This is a paragraph block. It contains a paragraph. The paragraph is contained in a block. The paragraph has text settings. I will be interested to see how blocks and settings are translated to semantic elements and styles and HTML and CSS.
This is a second paragraph block. Note that the image to the right (in an image block, of course) stays aligned to the right of both paragraph blocks and has its own property sheet of values like Alt text, description and caption to be displayed below the image. The image shows 9 terabytes of data: two 4Tb external drives — bus-powered USB3, no less — and a Samsung 850 EVO 1 Tb solid state drive and a 1.44 megabyte floppy drive for scale and contrast.
I also note that, in the editor, the paragraph does not wrap under the image until I hit Shift-Enter twice to start a new paragraph. However, on the published website, the paragraph wraps quite nicely, so this is an artifact of the editor.