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Long Island Weather Observer Sets U.S. Record With 84-Year Streak

35 points by e15ctr0n 12y ago

e15ctr0n 12y ago
Any HN readers who volunteer with their country's national weather service?
- ejr 12y ago
  My dad did years ago while in good health, but it's quite hard to keep up with family obligations and such. This makes his feat even more astounding. This kind of tenacity reminds me of Marion Stokes whose story was linked here before http://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/the-incredible-story-of-marion-stokes-who-single-handedly-taped-35-years-of-tv-news http://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/the-incredible-story-of-m...
- adestefan 12y ago
  Part of the problem is being in a location where you can collect accurate data. The setup is very particular. You basically need an open field to do it properly. I would love to do it, but all of my landed is wooded and is a poor location for weather data collection. There are actually some arguments about the accuracy of the automated data collected from the airports. Mainly stemming from the fact that airports are usually nowhere near the city in which they're collecting data for. There are also some dubious instrument configurations. For example, the setup at Reagan National, which is the official data for Washington, DC, was changed a couple years ago to where there are now rocks under the temperature station instead of grass. This is lead to some analysis that the official readings may be higher than the actual air temperature.
- gkelly 12y ago
  I'm not a volunteer observer, but I am the lead developer on the web app they now use to enter the observation data. The app is a result of the 'paperless' initiative the NWS (and NCDC) has. The person on the other end of his phone call is probably using this web app I work on.
ejr 12y ago
If anyone is curious, the particular station style - box - he has his instruments housed in is called a "Stevenson screen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenson_screen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenson_screen It's has double-louvers on all four sides and usually has an opening in the bottom as well. The idea is to protect the instruments from the weather while still allowing plenty of exposure to it.
- e15ctr0n 12y ago
  It would be a cool project for someone to hook up the instruments with wifi so that twice-daily readings are automatically taken and sent to the Weather Service.
  - ejr 12y ago
    Funny you mention, I did have a similar project on the back burner. The following were all the measurements that were supposed to be sent back in CSV format : "station","town","district","lon","lat","elev","temp","dew","humid","mbar","wspeed","wdir","precip","start","end","status" Lon, lat and elev are longitude, latitude and elevation of course and start, end were UNIX timestamps. I had an idea to have it send data back every 5 minutes to avoid the jet exhaust anomaly problem mentioned in the article. I could safely discard the outliers and store the rest. Sadly, this never got off the ground as I never had the time to build it.
  - xt508 12y ago
    You can find some of these projects from this map: https://thingful.net/?what=weather https://thingful.net/?what=weather .
  - simcop2387 12y ago
    It's not that hard, CWOP[1] and wview[2] support doing this out of the box. I've got a setup[3] in my parent's place that submits the data regularly to them all the time. That said I'd probably trust this guy more than random weather stations setup by unknown people. [1] http://wxqa.com/ http://wxqa.com/ [2] http://www.wviewweather.com/ http://www.wviewweather.com/ [3] http://weather.voots.org/ http://weather.voots.org/
hyperliner 12y ago
“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s what you did. In those Depression years, it came to mind once, twice, we’re in debt for the chicken houses and the farmhouse, but no. It’s what you did for your country.” It’s what you did for your country.

35 points by e15ctr0n 12y ago

e15ctr0n 12y ago

Any HN readers who volunteer with their country's national weather service?

ejr 12y ago
My dad did years ago while in good health, but it's quite hard to keep up with family obligations and such. This makes his feat even more astounding. This kind of tenacity reminds me of Marion Stokes whose story was linked here before http://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/the-incredible-story-of-marion-stokes-who-single-handedly-taped-35-years-of-tv-news http://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/the-incredible-story-of-m...
adestefan 12y ago
Part of the problem is being in a location where you can collect accurate data. The setup is very particular. You basically need an open field to do it properly. I would love to do it, but all of my landed is wooded and is a poor location for weather data collection. There are actually some arguments about the accuracy of the automated data collected from the airports. Mainly stemming from the fact that airports are usually nowhere near the city in which they're collecting data for. There are also some dubious instrument configurations. For example, the setup at Reagan National, which is the official data for Washington, DC, was changed a couple years ago to where there are now rocks under the temperature station instead of grass. This is lead to some analysis that the official readings may be higher than the actual air temperature.
gkelly 12y ago
I'm not a volunteer observer, but I am the lead developer on the web app they now use to enter the observation data. The app is a result of the 'paperless' initiative the NWS (and NCDC) has. The person on the other end of his phone call is probably using this web app I work on.

ejr 12y ago

If anyone is curious, the particular station style - box - he has his instruments housed in is called a "Stevenson screen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenson_screen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenson_screen It's has double-louvers on all four sides and usually has an opening in the bottom as well. The idea is to protect the instruments from the weather while still allowing plenty of exposure to it.

e15ctr0n 12y ago
It would be a cool project for someone to hook up the instruments with wifi so that twice-daily readings are automatically taken and sent to the Weather Service.
- ejr 12y ago
  Funny you mention, I did have a similar project on the back burner. The following were all the measurements that were supposed to be sent back in CSV format : "station","town","district","lon","lat","elev","temp","dew","humid","mbar","wspeed","wdir","precip","start","end","status" Lon, lat and elev are longitude, latitude and elevation of course and start, end were UNIX timestamps. I had an idea to have it send data back every 5 minutes to avoid the jet exhaust anomaly problem mentioned in the article. I could safely discard the outliers and store the rest. Sadly, this never got off the ground as I never had the time to build it.
- xt508 12y ago
  You can find some of these projects from this map: https://thingful.net/?what=weather https://thingful.net/?what=weather .
- simcop2387 12y ago
  It's not that hard, CWOP[1] and wview[2] support doing this out of the box. I've got a setup[3] in my parent's place that submits the data regularly to them all the time. That said I'd probably trust this guy more than random weather stations setup by unknown people. [1] http://wxqa.com/ http://wxqa.com/ [2] http://www.wviewweather.com/ http://www.wviewweather.com/ [3] http://weather.voots.org/ http://weather.voots.org/

hyperliner 12y ago

“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s what you did. In those Depression years, it came to mind once, twice, we’re in debt for the chicken houses and the farmhouse, but no. It’s what you did for your country.” It’s what you did for your country.