New Ireland Weather Network. Weather Stations Wanted

Snowbie

If you have a weather station and website anywhere in Ireland, please sign up using the link above.

Snowbie Weather Website For Local Dublin 13 Weather

Mothman Weather Website For Ashford,Wicklow

Arklow Weather Website,Wicklow

Arklow Live Data

John Cox Weather For Palmerstown,Dublin

Trogdor Weather Website For Bray,Wicklow

arctictree Weather Website For Roundwood,Wicklow

dolanbaker Weather Website For Athlone

slayer91 Weather Websitefor Quin,Clare

Supercell Weather Website For Annamoe,Wicklow

Osprey's Weather Website For Newbridge, Co Kildare

Danno Weather For South Laois History

Pikeirl Weather for Ballykeeran/Athlone

Pauln Weather from Kilgobnet, Waterford


As a lot of us have our own weather stations or equipment only a certain few of us have websites.It will become a lot more interesting if we could get a few more websites from around Ireland on here to check your own local weather conditions.

PM me if you need any help or to list your website here.

arctictree

DolanBaker - whats up with your weather station??

Is that Diurnial range even possible in this country???

A

Snowbie

AWS rainfall issue?
Noticed a couple of posts from Trogdor and Mothman about under-recording of rainfall over the last 24hrs in your areas.
Rainfall doesnt fall uniformly around the country even though the close proximity of stations but totals are in the high class here in the east regardless.The tipping buckets need to be clean out regulary,spiders and dirt like to nestle in them and on the sensors underneath so much so it gives inaccuracy.Also make sure the station is dead straight,any sort of unallignment left or right can affect the tipping and therefore the accuracy.I had this trouble before when starting out myself.

@Tristrame,sudden increase of rainfall around 18:30 in a minute of about 5mm when your max rain rate was this morning at 5:30am.For this increase it should have measured well above 40mm/hr.Was this a local downpour as there is vey little on radar to say otherwise or is it a weather display problem.

Usually my station lags behind in terms of rain and interested to know if mine is over-recording but i dont think it is.(Cleaned it about 2 weeks ago)Compared it to my rain gauge on ground and that measured spot on with AWS.Will compare it to Dublin airport tomorrow which no doubt that will be higher of its more wide open location.

But does the AWS under/over read after a dry spell when we get a lot of rain as we did today?

Snowbie

Snowbie wrote:

@Tristrame,sudden increase of rainfall around 18:30 in a minute of about 5mm when your max rain rate was this morning at 5:30am.For this increase it should have measured well above 40mm/hr.Was this a local downpour as there is vey little on radar to say otherwise or is it a weather display problem.

Ah just noticed that now.The rain bucket had debris and some water in it,I took them out at around that time.
Mine was definitely under recording.

Snowbie

Dublin airport surprisingly recorded lower than me at 30.1mm yesterday.But in fairness i had a final deluge before clearing which dropped 1.5mm with rain rate of 16mm/hr which missed the airport as it came from SW direction,otherwise totals would have been closer with me still reading more.

In fact all the synoptic stations recorded in east appart from casement where below our AWS totals.But you's are saying you have under-recorded,Trogdor,Mothman and yourself.Are ye expecting higher totals again.Must be due to our coastal locations or something.Do you have a seperate rain gauge on ground to compare or have you calibrated it with the measured jug of water method.

@ Tristrame im finding im cleaning my buckets more these days.Use to be twice yearly but have checked and cleaned them 3 times since christmas already due to build up of debris and bugs.After a dry april dust gathered and hardened in the tipping buckets.Warm water done the trick.

Snowbie

Snowbie wrote:

Dublin airport surprisingly recorded lower than me at 30.1mm yesterday.But in fairness i had a final deluge before clearing which dropped 1.5mm with rain rate of 16mm/hr which missed the airport as it came from SW direction,otherwise totals would have been closer with me still reading more.

In fact all the synoptic stations recorded in east appart from casement where below our AWS totals.But you's are saying you have under-recorded,Trogdor,Mothman and yourself.Are ye expecting higher totals again.Must be due to our coastal locations or something.Do you have a seperate rain gauge on ground to compare or have you calibrated it with the measured jug of water method.

I understand Mothman reported yesterday [url=http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=53363959&postcount=3620[/url] here [/url] that his AWS under recorded versus his quality controled official met Éireann recorder.

@ Tristrame im finding im cleaning my buckets more these days.Use to be twice yearly but have checked and cleaned them 3 times since christmas already due to build up of debris and bugs.After a dry april dust gathered and hardened in the tipping buckets.Warm water done the trick.

I didnt use any water,I used a little stick.It was very gooohey stuff-yuck! There was some water in the bucket that hadn't found its way through the icky stuff which would be pretty solid (though perhaps "sticky" rather than solid lol ) evidence that some rain was not getting recorded.
I must check it more often tbh.I'd be happy enough with it for another while.

Mothman

Yes, I have the Met Eireann gauge to see what the actual figure is. My AWS was slightly off level, as well as dirt.

Snowbie

Is that the copper cylindrical gauge you use MM,or is there a more up to date gauge the Met are using nowadays?

I find when my AWS is lagging behind on the manual gauge its time to clean AWS buckets,so far they are dead on readings both of them.This is why i got a second gauge as i didnt trust the readings it was given off,not due to location but with the volume of rain was falling at one time and knew it was reading inaccurately.

Mothman

Snowbie wrote:

Is that the copper cylindrical gauge you use MM,or is there a more up to date gauge the Met are using nowadays?

That's the one, daily readings at 09z. Some rain stations probably have siphon gauges

The day I go back to reading the copper cylindrical guage at 09z every morning agin will be the day I stop breathing.
It was such a chore in the unthanked daily commitment and life limiting type of way.

Mothman

Tristrame wrote:

The day I go back to reading the copper cylindrical guage at 09z every morning agin will be the day I stop breathing.
It was such a chore in the unthanked daily commitment and life limiting type of way.

Each to their own
Speaking of which, time to change suncard...

Supercell

Mothman wrote:

Each to their own
Speaking of which, time to change suncard...

Speaking of which..i've an idea what the next quarters bonus might bring.....;)

LoL I knew Mothman, what you meant by the wink straight away,I was even thinking about *that* pm conversation as I posted the above

I find military routine stifeling though at least I can leave boards moderation for weeks on end (don't tell Gandalf that :P) and the place won't fall apart.
I could never trust anyone to be particular enough with the met recording when I couldnt be there which is the main problem I had with it.

arctictree

arctictree wrote:

DolanBaker - whats up with your weather station??

Is that Diurnial range even possible in this country???

A

Just spotted this message

I assume you were referring to the temperature variations...
This is down to a badly sited temperature sensor, I have been building a house so the weather station has taken a back seat as far as building a stevenson shelter (or whatever it's called ) the sensor has been exposed to direct sunlight for part of the day.

I have just fitted a temporay sun shield to it, hopefully this will now start to give more realistic values.

I intend to build a proper enclosure for the sensors sometime soon.

I have also found that the rain gauge gave strange readings in March , as if the baseline was approx 7mm /hr constantly. sorted itself out in April.

Apart from an occasionally intermittent signal from the annemeter/wind vane everything has worked well.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote:

I have just fitted a temporay sun shield to it, hopefully this will now start to give more realistic values.

Yep, thats better, the temperatures recorded are now much closer to the "real" values.

arctictree

I've registered a domain name for my weather station - http://www.roundwoodweather.com Updates now every 5 mins. Yearly rainfall totals are wrong - can't figure that one out....

Snowbie - can you update the link in this thread? Thanks

Snowbie

Sure,no problem

AntiRip

On slayer91 Weather for Quin,Clare it shows the following values. Surely 31.4°C on 5/4/2007 is inaccurate right??



TEMPERATURE HIGHS HOT DAYS THIS MONTH
Today 21.1 °C at 15:23 PM Max > 30 °C 0 day(s)
Yest. 20.5 °C at 18:12 PM Max > 25 °C 1 day(s)
Month 27.0 °C on 8/3/2007 Warmest day 20.9 °C on: 03 Aug 2007
Year 31.4 °C on 5/4/2007 Warmest night 17.2 °C on: 04 Aug 2007
TEMPERATURE LOWS

Supercell

I'd say the temperature gauge isnt properly shielded.

Looking at http://www.met.ie/climate/daily-data.asp , the maximum temperature on 4th May (the date format seems to be American) was 22.9°C at Shannon Airport, so rather unlikely to be more than a couple of degrees higher than that, 31.4°C can be ruled out.

arctictree

Also, every now and then, weather stations or buggy software give out wacky readings. I have a reading of 0.2c for a morning in July which is obviously wrong as the station was reading 12c for the few minutes before and after. Have tried to fix it but this reading is stored somewhere in an unreadable binary file....

A

Supercell

One more to add to the list of Irish stations :- http://homepage.eircom.net/~osprey/

Osprey has been in touch with me via email and he's just set up his Vantage Pro and is happy to be added to the list here.

He's based in Newbridge Co Kildare, thanks Osprey!

Great to have an inland Vantage station online .

mike65

What is it with Wikla? The place is festooned with stations.

Mike.

Danno

There will be one in south Laois soon!

gordonre

Longfield wrote: »

One more to add to the list of Irish stations :- http://homepage.eircom.net/~osprey/

Osprey has been in touch with me via email and he's just set up his Vantage Pro and is happy to be added to the list here.

He's based in Newbridge Co Kildare, thanks Osprey!

Great to have an inland Vantage station online .

Longfield, thanks for adding my web page to the forum! I still have some work to do as its only a one pager using the standard template from Davis!

Cheers

malcolmh

Hi

new website getting up and running concentrating on realtime weather in donegal for starters.

We are adding new stations shortly including lighting detection equipment - all on an amature basis.

www.donegalweather.com

check it out and leave your thoughts....

Snowbie

A question regarding your lightning detection. Are you getting your own based in Donegal or are you using Morecombe's detection to cover your area from the UK?.

Danno

I am going to purchase this week. Any advice is welcomed on ProVantage 2.

Snowbie

Two more weather station added.
Danno from south Laois and Pikeirl from Athlone.

Danno

Can I suggest a link to this page: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/ListStations.asp?selectedCountry=Ireland

I see someone from Kilkenny went live this week also.

Mothman

Danno wrote: »

Can I suggest a link to this page: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/ListStations.asp?selectedCountry=Ireland

I see someone from Kilkenny went live this week also.

That Kilkenny station will have its own website soon and is sited near the closed Met office station.
More on this when fully live.

Danno

Good news! Somebody close by to compare my data with!

Snowbie

New station added. Pauln weather from Kilgobnet near Dungarvan Co.Waterford.

Thanks Paul and nice to have another site from the south east.
I think Mike will have particular interest in this site.

Deep Easterly

And two more coming up over the next few months. One in Tuam in North Co. Galway before the end of the year, whilst ongoing plans for another being set up with lightning detector in Galway (city) early 2009.

Snowbie, probably a mad/bad/sad idea, but is there a way to get a "current conditions" page set up on here based on the stations already available on this thread? Would be good the have an "at a glance" look at what is going on around the country weatherwise. Not manual of course, but somesort of link up to each station where conditions are updated automatically.

Actually, it does sound a bit mad/bad/sad..:o

Snowbie

Hi Paddy, My broadband at home is down since saturday night so i'm only getting to read the forum now as i'm in work.
I have looked into this before and will post up later as i have not got a min atm.

Snowbie

Snowbie wrote: »

Hi Paddy, My broadband at home is down since saturday night so i'm only getting to read the forum now as i'm in work.

Right someone is telling me porky pies. Eircom told my ISP that a lightning strike happened around my area on Saturday and an outage is the result. Now they are telling me a lightning strike when none such occured.;) My exchange is yards from my house also.

There are two neat little programs that i can upload which creates a map with current weather conditions using similar to METAR coding. You can add most stations both aviation and personal stations use for this but it comes at a cost to me or anyone who wishes to do this.

Mesomap

Skymet

This would give us stations from around the country with a live animated display of our data.

Or

I know we can do it with weather display software where anyone uploading their data can copy a certain URL to have a section displaying on live data. But only a couple of us have this software program.

Any more suggestions be good as i think it's a good idea.

I have setup mesomap on my website, the image below is live from the website.
But to get the full effect of mesomap you'll need to view the map on the website
where you can "hover" the mouse over any temperature reading to get additional information.


PS the station has been intermittant recently, so some info is missing (the 30 days history only goes back to the 10 August)

Weather BOFH

It should be possible to do some screen scraping from each site and aggrigate the results together onto a single page. I can look at knocking somthing together later on.

A more complicated but much better approach would be to log the data from each station directly to a database of some kind. There is a perl script which should work under Windows for the Vantage and I have already created a modified a version of Open2300 for the LaCrosse stations that does exactly this for my own site.

I'm guessing the scraping option is probably the best way to go as it requires a lot less work

Mothman

Snowbie wrote: »

Eircom told my ISP that a lightning strike happened around my area on Saturday and an outage is the result. Now they are telling me a lightning strike when none such occured.;) My exchange is yards from my house also.

:pac:

Mothman

Deleted User wrote: »

I have setup mesomap on my website, the image below is live from the website.
But to get the full effect of mesomap you'll need to view the map on the website
where you can "hover" the mouse over any temperature reading to get additional information.

This is excellent, pity the additional info stays visible for short length of time.
Is there a way to upload daily rainfall?

Danno

Excellent job dolanbaker - I see my data there via WUnderground. The rainfall figures there are incorrect for mine for some unknown reason. For example, WU says 134mm rain this month so far while WeatherLink says 177mm. Any ideas on what is happening?

Also, I wonder do MET Eireann use our data at all?

StratoQ

I like this display by the Scottish Weather Network. Seems quite a few countries have copied this template now.

http://www.scottishweather.net/

btw : Congrats to Paul. Things are hotting up in the Déise now!

Supercell

That scottish network is pretty impressive. Something like that here would be cool.

Snowbie

Supercell wrote: »

That scottish network is pretty impressive. Something like that here would be cool.

Have made contact with the chap on the Scottish network about something similar here,

His reply

The man you want to speak too is Ken True in the U.S.
He has put together all the weather networks that are listed here:
http://www.scottishweather.net/wxlinks.php

The way it works is that each member has to be uploading their data to a
website using Weather Display, VWS, WeatherLink or WUHU sofeware.
Those running the last three in the list are give small text files that
collect the data and are then uploaded to their site. Weather Display can
upload it's own file called "clientraw.txt".
The network server then gathers the data from all the members sites once
every 5 minute to display on the mesomap.

The network server will need to be able to run PHP scripting as that's what
the whole site is based around.

To make contact with Ken then maybe the best thing to do is join the
American Weather Network Forum, which is the main forum for all the network
admins, the forum is attached to this site:
http://www.northamericanweather.net/

Quite a few of the admins & members also frequent the Weather-Watch forum
which caters for the Weather Display software.

Now do we have enough sites that use the following software (in bold above) to start something similar here.

Myself, Trogdor and Black Briar use Weather Display software to begin with.
What software do the rest of you use?

Mothman

I use weatherlink and already upload such text files for a couple of networks
One example

I use VWS and upload to Wunderground.com

Snowbie

There on the ball in replying quickly and very helpful.:)

I'd be pleased to help you set up an Irish weather network. I can build the starter Mesomap graphic and PHP code for the network.
There's a few things you'll need to be able to run your network:

1) a domain name to act as the regional hub site (irishweather.net? erieweather.net? )

2) a *nix webhoster that allows you to run cron jobs .. and it's helpful (but not required) to have SSH access. The cron should be able to run at 5 minute intervals, and preferably with a specific minute offset (2s and 7s is the best). The cron job runs a PHP script to fetch and store a cache of the member station conditions. The cache file is read from the hub site by member's mesomaps to display the conditions on the mesomap itself.
It would be very helpful for me to have temporary FTP access to the new site for initial setup and testing.

3) a forum for your members .. could be a subforum on an existing forum, but it should be viewable by members only .. the mesomap code is exclusive for each network. The majority of the networks have a dedicated SMF forum associated with the network hub domain, and I highly recommend SMF for that purpose. The only two vBulletin boards are run by Grant (tamworthweather.co.uk) for the UK and for (strangely enough) New Zealand.

So.. let me know what you decide on for the domain name and host site .. I'll get started customizing a mesomap software set for you (I can even generate a hub website based on the template set).

Snowbie

I will set up a new domain for the new site later on at 5.75euro a year only. My webhost can handle all of the above requirements.
Obviously this new site will show all our own personal stations on a custom vector map for the entire island (something similar to my map i use with the lightning detector) I am supplying him with.

Seperate to all this i am creating a METAR mesomap that will upload all the aviation AP around the country. I don't know as yet if i can incorporate one into the other but should be able to run them side by side.

Snowbie

Snowbie wrote: »

Right someone is telling me porky pies. Eircom told my ISP that a lightning strike happened around my area on Saturday and an outage is the result. Now they are telling me a lightning strike when none such occured.;) My exchange is yards from my house also.

Much as I am loathe to agree with Eircom on a corporate level...They may well be correct.
You see the lightning may have struck at a pole several miles from your house [hence you wouldn't have thought that there was one near yours] and then it travels all along the line to the exchange.

Living in the sticks as I do,I get along well with the local ESB and Eircom crews and they tell me that lightning strikes several miles away can blow out the transformer at the end of the line [in the case of the ESB] or the exchange in the case of Eircom.

Supercell

Fair play Snowbie, really appreciate the effort you are putting into this.

Snowbie

This is coming along nicely now atm. I have registered a domain and map has been created.
I dont know if this is a requirement as yet but who here uploads data to Wunderground or CWOP? Even if you don't have a website, you could still be included on the map to show your data.

Weather BOFH

Snowbie, I was wondering if you had an example of the format of the text file required? I'd like to contribute if possible.