Fishersville Weather Stations and Website News [back to Fishersville Weather]

12/28/2011 16:30

  1. A Major problem with the weather station yesterday, 12/27 at 17:45. has brought everything down. Tried lots of things but nothing worked so all was reset today at 16:30. This also means lost data and odd settings. Some data was mnually set. The hardest to fix is rainfall. As of now the December total is 4.02 and the yearly total is 42.39. The big barametric dip on the 27th - 28th was due to reset of the altitude at the station and not actual 'major' falling pressure.

10/01/2011 10:08

  1. Problem with UPS system discovered during a power failure yesterday evening. System battery calibration started at 7:50am this morning. So far, it looks as though the battery is 'dead'. The system should be brought back on-line around 2pm.

09/18/2011 09:40

  1. Total communications failure around 23:10hrs last night. The entire system had to be reset around 09:30hrs today resulting in some data loss. No data recovery is planned.

06/20/2011 07:50

  1. My tipping bucket automated rain guage did not record our overnight rain. Of course, the only time we know it's not working is when it rains. Anyway, it turn out that a huge spider was in there along with his web that gummed it all up. He must have hatched in there as there are no openings in the guage even close to large enough for him to get in.. or out, in this case. But it's fixed now. The database is being adjusted to match my backup standalone guage, which shows 1.25". The data will be split between today and yesterday based on the ratio from another close by guage.

05/22/2011 21:12

  1. Weather station USB communication hung on 5/20 @ 16:15 which halted all time based data; that's mostly everything. Unfortunatly, I was away in Virginia Beach until today. The fix required a total reset that lost additional data and some settings. Lost data will not be replaced.

05/15/2011 14:31

  1. Rapid Fire was stuck at 10am or so. Restarted VWS station control and is now working. It's a good idea to compare the refresh time in the upper right of Rapid Fire to the Station Time along the bottom of the Wind Interval chart before 'trusting' the data.

05/02/2011 08:33

  1. Problems developed with the wireless temperature guage after it was moved to better protect it from the sun. Nearly overhead sun at this time of the year 'inflates' readings at some times. However, the best place to mount the guage is apparently beyond the reach of the wireless signal. It's been moved back to the original location for now. We'll see aboput building a sun shield over the guage sometime this week.

04/28/2011 13:09

  1. Automated rain guage failure. Manually adjusted rain to match standard guage. Later found that a spider had built a web inside the automated guage causing the tipping bucket to stick midway. This stopped measurement as well as discarged the battery. Repaired at 12:45pm.

03/20/2011 07:33

  1. Added NOAA Radio link to "Other Weather Links" page.

01/26/2011 06:42

  1. The batteries on the wind guage dies overnight. Light rain out there now and snow is forecast to start later so I'll have to get to replacing them as soon as it gets light enough outside. I've set 9am as the time to have that done. If that does not happen I'll post another news item. Otherwise, assume it's done by then. <Jack>

11/16/2010 10:21

  1. Station locked up around 9pm last night resulting in out of sync and incorrect data after reset. I think I've corrected the most important data. Please advise via the "Website Feedback" link at the bottom of the site page if something you use seems to still be in error. <Jack>

10/15/2010 13:21

  1. Corrected the total (annual) rainfall. The offset was lost when a station reset was done to fix the USB problem of 10/9.

10/14/2010 15:55

  1. Corrected the barometer altitude offset. The offset of 410m was lost when a station reset was done to fix the USB problem of 10/9.

10/09/2010 10:13

  1. USB communication between the WMR100N station and PC resulted in lost data between 10/8 23:51 and 10/9 10:04. This is not considered worth recovering as the Fishersville Weather Station is mostly used for current data. Note that some reports will be messed up due to the problem.
  2. Changed the 'radar' link to open in the same 'new' window as 'Rapid fire'.

06/26/2010 07:42

Today's fixes and updates...

  1. Fixed the "Normal Rain, month to date:" problem. This was actually getting the data correctly from the SHD database but they have a database problem on their end so I switched it to the CHO database. Who knew...
  2. Put a Latest News" link at the top of the Main page to make it easy to see when this news was last updated.
  3. Added a "[back to Fishersville Weather]" link to this news page.

06/25/2010 15:02

Yearly rainfall has been patched to reflect the correct amount. An attampt was made to go back and update the database for those days (about a month) when the station was off-line. Doing this has proved tedious. So, in the meantime, a patch was done with rainfall.


06/23/2010 07:22

Minor fixes and updates...

  1. Fixed broadcast link and changed it to "Current conditions..."
  2. Point local radar at Blacksburg FCX doppler to better view prevailing conditions.
  3. Pre-Zoom radar to 4x centerd over Fishersville.


06/21/2010 15:40

Remaining website links have now been updated on the new server. Note that the Help page exists but does not reflect this release and has been left available in the event is may provide useful information. It will be updated for this release sometime in the future. Please use the "Feedback" link at the bottom of the home page to report any broken links or comments.

06/21/2010 12:04

For those of you who were not aware, my old weather station was damaged beyond repair over a month ago from a 'close by' lightning strike.  After several attempts to get it running again I gave up and ordered a new Oregon Scientific WMR100N station from my friends at Ambient Weather.  Although I've had it mostly up since last Tuesday, the 15th, it was still running with my old control software.  As of 10am this morning, it's officially running with the latest control software and on a new web server.  If all went well, the website looks the same.  But you may have some old bookmarks that no longer work.  Please use only the web address below to access my Fishersville Weather Station.

  Fishersville Weather Station:  http://weather.fishersville.net/

There are a few links on the website that still need to be changed or repaired.  I'll get to them over the next several days.  I am also looking looking at moving away from Underground Weather for 'history' and 'rapid fire' to Weather Bug.  Stay tuned for more as that project gets underway.

Jack Cameron

6/10/10 22:15 I've ordered another workstation. We're talking low end Oregon Scientific WMR100N which will work with my existing control software and database. I expect it to be delivered as early as Monday 6/14.
6/01/10 15:00 The good news is that USB to serial adapter came. The bad news is that the station still does not communicate. So it's clear that the problem is with the weather station and not the control PC. The station is then officially dead. I'll see if I can justify the expense of getting a new station. I'm told perhaps I could find a refurbished one for under $200. If I do not get another station I'll probably stop maintaining this and any related website as well... thus no more rain or snow data either. Got to think about it... check back later.
5/28/10 15:18 Parts for the station control PC have yet to show up. My faith in eBay is lacking a bit. Maybe tomorrow.. maybe next week. On the other hand it's 50/50 at best if this will fix the station communication. If not, perhaps some of you can contibute a new station which I'll set up and manage like I've been doing. When I finally quit managing it the donors can be put in a drawing based on their donated % to get the station.
5/22/10 15:18 Still awaiting parts for the station control PC.
5/17/10 21:00 Moved the "Rain Guage" table to above the news table to keep track of my rain guage readings.
5/17/10 10:07 Another attempt to bring up the weather station has failed. Will not try again until the USB to COM port converter arrives.
5/16/10 09:04 Wow.. several of you were using the radar and other weather links on the Fishersville Weather page. So, for those of you who need the station page, you can get to it by clicking HERE. Please realize that the station is down so the actual weather data is not correct.



11/23/2009 11:24

After several days of tinkering with the old PC that serves as my weather station controller I managed to get it mostly working again.  The likely problem was PC disk drive controller which took out the primary hard drive's boot sector.   In the end, I was able to fix backup drive, install WinXP, and restore some of the lost data.. all without any cost.. so far.

The website is now up again, but without the historical data as that requires programs I'm not wanting to install and maintain.  On the up-side, I upgraded the control program to support a direct connection to my server via Underground Weather.  That link is on the left of the website and called "Rapid Fire".  Rapid fire requires that you have Adobe's Flash player installed; most Windows systems and browsers already have it.  If it works for you, and my weather station stays up, you'll have a view of my current data refreshed about every 10 seconds or so.  Feel free to bookmark a link to "Rapid Fire".

   Fishersville weather: http://weather.fishersville.net/

Change summary:

  1. Historical data and links "Reports and Charts" removed.
  2. Rapid Fire link added to main page.
  3. Monthly and Yearly Summary reports  moved to main page.  These are right off my station so snow data cannot be combined with rain to show moisture.
  4. SHD and CHO metar link on main page.
  5. Local Weather Exchange links (page bottom) expanded to include many more stations.

Pitfalls:

  1. Rain tipping bucket not heated which will mess up data in freezing weather.
  2. Anemometer has a bad mercury sensor which sometimes results in very high, incorrect, readings.
  3. Some old bookmarks and now invalid. All bookmarks except "http://weather.fishersville.net/" will soon be invalid.  The server will move from nTelos to a private server.

11/16/2009 19:35

For those of you who were using links on my weather site I've put some of those right below. Isuppose I can create another front page with these and other weather related links. But for now, this is it...

11/15/2009 08:40

Well, repeated attempts to get the weather station controller going have failed due to a hardware problem with the hard drive controller. This computer is a very old IBM Aptiva that's been in constant 24/7 service since 1998. And even older is my WM-918 Oregon Scientific weather station. So, unless some funding shows up to replace all this, it's time to say good-by to the Fishersville Weather website.

I'll leave this page here for a while so y'all know what's happened. If you had bookmarked some of the other site pages those will also stay around for a while, but obviously will not update anymore.

Jack Cameron

11/14/2009 14:20

The Fishersville weather station controller experienced a major hard drive failure on 11/14/2009 at 6:30am. Unfortunately, attempts to recover the disk have also failed resulting in data loss back to the last backup on 11/11/2009. Due to the very old weather station hardware this might be the right time to retire it from further service.

When a decision has been reached as to what to do it will be posted here.

Thanks,

Jack Cameron