About . . .
Me
I'm now firmly established in Puketapu, and have installed a station here to provide local weather info for the Hawkes Bay community. This weather service is provided free of charge, and does not generate any income. I work part time as an Emergency Care Instructor for the Eastern Institute of Technology, and spend my leisure time watching the weather, reading, and target shooting. I'm a member of the NZ Meteorological Society, and contribute to their hamweather network.
Puketapu Weather Station:
The "heart" of the station is an Oregon Scientific WM-918 electronic collection system. This device captures data from several sensors, and loads it into a HP534a PC, where I can view and analyse it.
Wind direction and strength are supplied by sensors atop a 15 metre high mast. Temperature and humidity figures come from sensors mounted in a Stevenson screen, located on an open area of lawn some distance from the house. Rainfall is captured in a collector-type raingauge, which is read and emptied daily at 1800hrs. Event rainfall and intensity are measured by a tipping bucket rainguage linked to the WM-918. Sunshine hours are recorded by an Instromet electronic sunshine recorder. Its sensor lives at the top of the mast with the anemometer, and the readout is on the office wall. And other observations rely on me, of course!
Data Analysis and Storage:
Data is stored by the WM-918 on the computer's hard disk. I can thus review the day's figures, and determine the timing, duration, and severity of significant weather events. For example, rainfall intensities, rate of barometric change, and average windspeeds are accessible from this data. For data collection and display, I rely on Andy Weir's outstanding "FreeWx" programme, which runs 24hrs/7days, and is an extremely user-friendly and efficient piece of software. Data analysis and archival is managed by a home-brewed database.