“It’s Another Yankee Forecast” was a handy and memorable name for a site I’ve owned for many years, and adapted to my latest hobby of weather observation. It refers to the old chestnut, “if you don’t like New England weather, just wait a minute” which was coined by … Mark Twain? Unlikely. Will Rogers? Nyah-uh. Like Yogi Berra, who may or may not have said, “I never said half the things I said,” the quote is attributed to many places and authors, but most likely should be credited to “Anon.” The great site, Quote Investigator has an indepth article here: “If You Don’t Like Our Weather, Just Wait a Few Minutes.”
I enjoyed the article’s citation of a Mark Twain speech he actually did make, which included a couple of great quotes, like:
There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger’s admiration—and regret.
and:
Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.
The fun of New England weather is to grab a light jacket and sunglasses to walk the dog, only to be hit with a blizzard whiteout halfway home, or bundling up on a blustery fall day only to be ripping off layers in the tropical heat minutes later.
We have received around one-sixth of an inch of rain in the first 19 days of September and temperatures have been pretty consistently peaking in the 80s. My area in New Hampshire averages around 4 inches a month every month of the year and the climate depends on it. Three weeks without rain is far from a disaster, but it puts a strain on the fall season. Lawns go brown and dormant when they should be growing in a cool, wet season. Fall foliage is turning brown and falling a little earlier than usual.
The CoCoRaHS data explorer Climatology page for my station, NH-MR-68, shows we’ve received only 7% of the normal rain we should expect at this point in the month. Source: https://dex.cocorahs.org/stations/NH-MR-68/climatology
Fortunately, the forecast predicts we won’t see another day in the 80s this month, and we should see some rain next week. Hopefully, the foliage will recover and give us a good year, and a little rain will get the lawns back in shape.
I’ve been doing some experiments in finding the optimal placment of the GW1100 gateway. The gateway receives radio signals from Ecowitt weather instruments in the field: anemometer, UV, light, air & soil temperature, humidity, rain as well as in-house temperatures, barometric pressure and indoor pm2.5, does a few local calculations, hosts a small set of web pages, and makes the data available over the in-house intranet. If the signals from the instruments are too weak or attenuated (by distance, metal screens, water walls or dense construction). that data is lost.
I noticed when I added the meadow soil temperature instrument (an Ecowitt WN34S) last week, that the readings were erratic, so I checked on the strength of the signal, and eventually graphed all of the signals on our in-house WeeWx web page. I first moved the GW1100 to an upstairs rear window. Anemometer signals were better, but rain and T&H outside worse. I tried a back room on the lower floor and that may turn out to be optimal. I’ll continue to test.
Overnight signal results from moving the GW1100 to different windows
Signal strength is reported by the GW1100 in a scale of zero to four. and the WeeWX software graphs an average value The nearby in-house “Upstairs” and “Basement” temperature/humidity sensors (two Ecowitt WH32) always have a strong signal. The outdoor T&HP sensor (Ecowitt WH31_EP) was good when the GW1100 was in north-facing windows at the front or back of the house, but signals were poor around 1600 when I tried the upstairs placement. The anemometer (an Ecowitt WH68) has never been very strong, as it is the furthest away, and behind a metal-roofed garage. When the GW1100 was upstairs the signal appeared the strongest, but the rain gauge and outdoor T&H were notably weaker.
Sensors showing IDs and signal strength for anemometer, rain gauge and outside temperature and humidity
GW1100 web page showing devices, IDs and signal strength for “Upstairs” and “Basement” T&H
GW1100 web page showing devices, IDs and signal strength for meadow soil temperature
Alert readers (I see you out there!) will wonder why I didn’t just use the internal web pages of the GW1100 that display a “signal” column, shown above. The problem with those is that the signal strength appears to be averaged over time, and not as immediately responsive as the graphs I generated with WeeWX. Overnight, all of the signal scores caught up, and all are displaying four bars in the morning.
The autumn season turned startlingly fast with morning temperatures dropping into the 40s, so it’s time to do the upkeep and maintenance on the outside instruments before winter weather makes them inaccessible. Today, I replaced the AA battery in the anemometer. I use lithium batteries for the outdoor instruments, as they are long-lasting, and tolerate a wider range of temperatures.
One of our home landscaping projects is to recover an area overrun by bittersweet vine, and we’re going to try to establish a wildflower meadow. Following instructions from the seed vendor, we were told to track the soil temperature. Ecowitt sells the WN34S soil temp probe, and it was pretty simple to power it up and get it to display on our in-house monitors.
Not strictly a meteorological issue, but certainly an air quality issue! The slightest breezes were launching clouds of yellow pollen out of the pine trees, and the air was so hazy I was looking for a fire. Take precautions if you, like me, suffer spring allergies.
Thanks to Ken True of Saratoga-weather.org, an updated script to display river levels is in place. The NOAA has replaced a couple of older systems with inconsistent APIs and data formats with a new and improved system. Note that for the moment, you need to click to close the update message and the legend that take up half the display, but that should be temporary.
On the morning of April 4th, snow overtops the weather instruments.
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!
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!
