Web Cam, Photos and Station Information

 

 

Weather Dials:

 

Rain detail:

 

Wind History

 

Ice and wildlife can throw off the readings . . .

 

surfer dude . . .

 

dropping a duce . . .

 

 

 

Installation of the sister station in Port Washington, NY in 2007

  

 

 

no parking . . .

 

Mt. Sinai installation:

 

 

 

 

About the Weather Station and Software

The weather station is a Vantage Pro 2 Plus, made by Davis Instruments of California. It is one of the higher end stations for universities, schools and home hobbyists. It has many of the features of "professional" stations costing significantly more, and its measurements are nearly as precise.

The main unit (the "integrated sensor suite") is mounted above the roof of my home (for our sister station, it's mounted on a large mast above the third floor of Schreiber High School). In addition to the anemometer and wind cups, the integrated sensor suite measures rainfall to the 100th of an inch, as well as sensors for temperature, humidity, solar radiation and ultraviolet index. All these readings are fed into the "brains" of the unit, a "sensor interface module" ("SIM") with radio transmitter. The sensor interface module is battery powered, with a solar panel keeping the battery charged.

From the console, data is transferred to a nearby computer loaded with "Weather-Display" software. Weather-Display was created by Brian Hamilton, a New Zealand software developer, dairy farmer and weather hobbyist extraordinaire. Weather-Display takes the data generated by the Vantage Pro 2 and, in turn, generates an enormous variety of graphs, dials, graphic images and other data. Those graphs etc. can be used in web sites to display up-to-the-second weather. "Weather-Display Live" an add-on program, generates a Flash display of up-to-the-second data. Additionally, Weather-Display has nearly 1,000 "tags" that can be placed within a web page to pull current measurements/data into any web document. This feature can be used to customize the web site to the author's taste. Examples of the tags are found in the "Current Conditions" area of this web site.

Finally, Weather-Display can upload the measurements to NOAA and several popular weather sites as well as the owner's own web page. At the same time, Weather-Display can download data from NOAA, such as current watches, warnings and other critical data to be used to supplement the user's own data.