Station Notes

New Computer Online

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-09-04T06:07:17Z

It only took half a year, but the new computer is online. I installed the new compiler version of Weather Display, and a different USB to serial adaptor, and everything seems to be running smoothly.

The Boltek Storm Tracker lightning detector was another matter. The Boltek did not fit in the new computer. Grrr! There are two computers online to run the weather station, luckily, I was able to install it in the other computer. It took a couple of days to get this all running. It involves installing the Boltek and driver, the Storm Tracker software and map set-up, Stikelink, GPS and driver and the WASP2 network. I pity the person starting out with this!

The WXSIM forecast went crazy again. After looking at it several times, I finally realized the setting for snow cover was checked. This was due to loading a back-up ini file. Clearing that raised today's high by ten degrees! This is an excellent program, but it can be a bit daunting at times.

The only problem now is, the one web cam is offline. I tried to run the set-up program, the usual fix, but it appears the camera is not getting power. I might have to replace it.

edit-
Ha! It was a break in the power line, the web cam is back online.
links:
web cam
lightning page
WXSIM
WXSIM / NWS comparison page

Offline, Updates

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-08-10T09:21:00Z

The station was offline again last week. It was still down when the tech got here. He said, unsurprisingly, the problem was in their office. Been up 3 whole days now, maybe they got it right this time.

I added a new page, NASA Image of the Day. I was not aware of this until Ken True updated the script. Check it daily! So far, they have been great!

I updated the site map. There are pages listed which are not in the regular page menu. If you like any of those pages, such as The air and water temperature at Lewes Delaware, or alternate radar page from Weather Underground, drop me a line.

Offline

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-07-25T17:49:08Z

This is getting old! Twice, within the last few days, the station was offline for at least one day. Frontier net, the ISP for the station, claimed the problem is not on their end. Since nothing has changed here, I find that difficult to believe. A tech is coming Tuesday, hopefully we can get this problem straightened out. This has to happen during T-storms, since the station gets 2 to 3 times the normal unique visitors. For updates, check Twitter. Of course, updates will not come while the station is offline.

I plan to again try to switch to the new weather computer. This did not work the last time I tried it. I have a couple of ideas to get it working this time, but expect problems. I will try to find a period with good weather, since the station gets few visitors then. Hopefully, it will be the last week of July / the first week of August. Check Twitter for updates.

Pollen

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-06-29T08:53:54Z

I have been looking for a pollen script for the web page for some time, and I finally found one without all the tracking bugs. I added it at the top of the Air Quality page. It gets the info from, but is not otherwise associated with, AccuWeather. You can add it to your iGoogle page here.

Pedal To Preserve 2010

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-05-08T09:15:28Z

The Pedal To Preserve ride is Saturday, June 5, 2010. This ride raises money to preserve farmland in Lancaster county, a cause all county residents should support. There are 6, 20 and 51 mile routes. Visit their home page for registration info.

Title Sponsor

Recent Updates

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-04-11T11:17:08Z

Daily high / low temperature added to home page

We recently had some record high temperatures, and I noticed that my record script did not pop up. The script only displays record high and lows for the year. Since station records only go back to June 2005, daily records could pop up too often. So, to see how close to a record the temperature is, I decided to add a tool tip to display the record high and low. I thought that I would put it on today's Max / Min, but that was showing yesterday's actual high and low, and I did not want to do away with that. The Word Current has the weather description as a tool tip, so I did not want to change that, either. So I put it on the average high and low. Hover the cursor over the word Averages, under the Temperature field on the home page, to see the station records high and low for the day.

Atlantic storm page updated
I added an interactive map from Stormpulse.com to the Hurricane Page. It is very nice, check it out!

Earth Hour on March 27

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-03-06T09:43:15Z

Earth Hour 2010 will take place on March 27, 2010 from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm, local time. This will be the third year for NH PA Weather.

Earth Hour support has definitely grown in the US! From the FAQ:
• In 2009, hundreds of millions of people in more than 4,000 cities in 87 countries on seven continents participated. In the U.S., 80 million Americans, 318 cities and eight states officially turned off their lights for Earth Hour including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City and San Francisco.

From the Wiki:
Reports show that the United States topped the Earth Hour participation with an estimated 80,000,000 people, 318 cities and 8 states participating. The Philippines saw participation from 647 cities and towns or over 15 million Filipinos were estimated to have joined in the hour-long lights-off at 8:30 - 9:30 PM local time. This was followed by Greece with 484 cities and towns participating, and Australia with 309.

Please join NH PA Weather in turning out the lights, from 8:30 to 9:30, on March 27!

Full Screen Weather

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-02-14T09:53:37Z

This is a nice web page by Weather Underground. It is a mesomap with Google maps and Weather Underground data. It has a toolbar at the top to personalize to your liking. I found the default settings to be best for my liking, but it's fun to explore. You can view New Holland here, or select a different locale here.

How much did we get this time?

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-02-11T09:50:38Z

Well, I had no idea how to even measure the amount this time, but here is what people reported to the NWS:
Lititz 22.0 541 PM 2/10
Eden 20.0 520 PM 2/10 Manheim TWP.
Goodville 20.0 830 PM 2/10
Millersville 19.0 656 PM 2/10
Manheim 16.0 100 PM 2/10
New Holland 16.0 230 PM 2/10
Rothsville 15.7 120 PM 2/10
Lancaster 15.0 700 PM 2/10
Someone else had reported 17" for New Holland.

I uploaded some images from this storm. You can see how nasty it looked during the storm. Look at the depth at the birdbath. My car wasn't spared this time.

There is another storm headed this way, but the prediction is for it to stay to the South of us. But Tuesday's forecast is for more snow!

How Much Did We Get 2-6-2010

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-02-07T11:18:53Z

This sounds like an easy question! Walk out, stick tape in snow, read tape. As soon as I walked out the door I knew it wouldn't be so easy. The brick patio at the bottom of my steps was clear. Also, an area of a couple feet surrounding my car was bare. The rest of the driveway had a couple of feet. No problem, I'll walk across the street to the large field, measure it there. I didn't expect to see drifting in the field, but there are a couple of trees in the field, near the street, and the area around their base was clear. So I continued on to the soccer field. I know this to be mostly level. I measured a couple of places and found the depth to be from 14 to 15 inches. So I called it 14 1/2 inches. Later, I found a page on the NWS with snow depths. This is what they offered:
...LANCASTER COUNTY...
MILLERSVILLE 24.5 1216 PM 2/6
MANHEIM 22.0 908 AM 2/6
MARIETTA 21.0 727 AM 2/6
LANCASTER 20.0 804 AM 2/6
LEOLA 18.0 909 AM 2/6
SAFE HARBOR DAM 18.0 700 AM 2/6
ROTHSVILLE 17.5 820 AM 2/6
NEW HOLLAND 17.2 700 AM 2/6
MOUNT NEBO 17.0 845 AM 2/6
EPHRATA 15.5 835 AM 2/6
I really do not think that we had 17 inches in New Holland, but what do I know? We had a bunch, is all I do know.

I uploaded some pics from the web cams. This one is from Friday night, the camera is starting to frost over. You can see the bare area around my car here. This one is a general snow shot. Here you can see the wind blowing the snow around. Finally, a shot from the bird cam.

Weathercam 2 Online

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-01-31T10:22:50Z

I received an email from Skip informing me that, Weathercam 2 was offline. This happens from time to time, especially when the camera's IP changes. If you notice that it is offline, please drop me a line. There is a contact page linked at the bottom of the home page, and most others. I know it is a pain doing the captchas, but they are a necessity. You can skip that by sending a message to dave at nhpaweather dot com. I do get mail from people that use the camera, especially when the weather is bad, and I appreciate hearing that, so please don't hesitate to tell me when it is down. To get an image from the camera, click here, and to get the feed, click here.

iphone

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2010-01-17T13:34:34Z

I have updated the Storm Prediction Center page. The script is by Curly, with the discussion here. Look under the Advisories menu to see my page, or click here.

I added a new iphone page. I already had a wap page, but this one seems 'neater'. You can see the discussion here, and view my page here.

I changed the 7 day forecast page to include the pictorial forecast from yr.no.
"yr.no is the joint online weather service from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation." View my page here.

WXSIM Hourly Forecast

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2009-12-20T18:00:26Z

We had quite a storm here, yesterday! The station only recorded .44 liquid equivalent, which is about half of what I think we received. A fellow weather enthusiast reported 13" of snow for New Holland. With the way it was blowing all around the house, I really did not know the best spot to measure, so I will agree with that amount. The web site received a record 75 unique visitors. I don't count the 105 recorded once, we won't talk about that.

New WXSIM Hourly Forecast CSV Script
I added a script to display the Wxsim forecast in an hourly manner. I really like this display! You can view it here. See the regular format WXSIM forecast. If you wish to add it to your web site, you can download it here.

WXSIM is a forecast generated by NH PA Weather. It rivals the National Weather Service in accuracy.

edit- The picture is now clickable.

Snowfall Equivalency Update

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2009-12-05T17:18:21Z

Back in August, I had written a simple script to calculate the snowfall equivalency from the melt in the rain gage. Today I finally got a chance to see if it works. It didn't! It showed snowfall as equal to the melt in the rain gage. I changed the script, for this temperature it should be 10 X the melt. This is based on the chart here. This is only an approximation, the actual amount of snowfall can be much more, or much less. The script only shows up when the temp is below 34.1. Look for the results of the script on the home page, under the rain section.

Weather Display now has 3D charts! I added a page with the monthly rainfall vs the average chart. You can see it here. You can also find it on the charts menu, it is the bottom item. There is another chart that I like, but it does not show all the data that it is supposed to. It should show the difference between this year's temps and last year's. I will add it to the menu, if Windy ever corrects it. You can view the .gif here.

wx9 and wx2 Updates

nospam@example.com (Dave) — 2009-10-14T09:09:32Z

About New Holland Weather
I found a system status script, and thought it worthwhile to add to my site. I believe that it was originally written by the folks at Southern Maryland Weather. Ken True made a version available on the wxforum. I added the status script to the About page, and updated some of the info there. I am playing with the idea of adding the individual status entries to the pages where their data is shown.

Pictorial Forecast
There is a new, way pictorial, way to display forecasts, and was mentioned in both weather forums that I follow. I really like it, and was trying to decide whether or not to create a separate page for it. It does take awhile to load, so I decided to put it on the Extended Forecast page. (You have to scroll down to see it.) If you click on it, you will go full screen. (Hit [escape] to exit full screen.) In full screen mode, you can scroll through the forecast using the scroll on your mouse, or by clicking on the days under the picture. I also have this on my facebook page. If you are friends with someone else that has this on facebook, you can see their forecast by looking out their window.
user3162

If you wish to become friends with me, please mention WEATHER.

edit- Oops Forgot to mention the web site to get the forecast app. From there, you can add to your facebook page, download a screen saver or add to your web page.

edited again Fixed the link to the extended forecast page