Category: Local Observations

Posted on

Downtime

Several of the weather reporting systems we have running broke down at 5:15 PM yesterday. While setting up fans in the windows after a long hot day, I suspect I bumped the GW1100 gateway device and cause it to malfunction. The gateway gets signals from all the local sensors, and makes that data available on the LAN. From there, a Raspberry Pi reads the data, formats it into several pretty formats, and forwards it on the website where you read it, and also forwards the data on to other online sites.

The gateway was in a quirky state neither on nor off, and the Raspberry Pi locked up waiting for it complete a conversation with gateway.

I didn’t notice the problem until this morning and after a lot of running around getting diagnostic info, turning things off and back on again (still the #1 solution to IT problems!) and jiggling a lot of wires, it appears we’re back up and running.

Posted on

Hot enuf for ya?

A typical question to ask around Northern New England the the dog days of late August, but we had extraordinary heat in mid May. On the 20th of the month, a listing of the hottest places in the US (by official airport weather station readings) would typically include Phoenix or Palm Desert or someplace in Texas, but on this date, they were all along the East Coast, even listing Concord, NH as one of the hottest spots in the U.S. !

A table of the top 10 hottest airports in the US on May 20th, 2026 including in order: Newark, NJ at 99.0°F, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Raleigh-Durham, Washington DC, and the bottom 4 tied at 96.1°F: Boston, Concord NH, NYC's La Guardia and Richmond VA.
A table of the top 10 hottest airports in the US on May 20th, 2026 including in order: Newark, NJ at 99.0°F, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Raleigh-Durham, Washington DC, and the bottom 4 tied at 96.1°F: Boston, Concord NH, NYC’s La Guardia and Richmond VA.

Posted on

Contoocook reaches 100℉ !

Okay, it’s not boiling hot in Tooky on the Eve of Christmas Eve. As of this morning 6:45am, it was -5.4℉ in Tooky. But that means, combined with the high temperature of 95.2℉ on June 20th, Contoocook saw a range of over 100℉ over the year.

That’s a tad warmer than usual, but nowhere near a record for low temperatures. It’s been -17℉ in previous years during this week, and in the past 33 years, I once saw -33℉ and, boy, that’s cold weather for a dog walk! Stay warm and enjoy the holiday season!

Posted on

Hot enuf for ya?

Concord broke an all-time record for this date by an enormous margin of 5°F:

Concord, NH high temperature for 6-Nov-2024 is 5 degree Fahrenheit over the previous record.

Posted on

Wicked Dry September

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.

U.S. Drought Monitor shows a band through NH has now reached the D0, Abnormally Dry, phase. Source: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/png/current/current_nh_trd.png
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.