| Question | Answer |
|
How accurate are the wind measurements? |
Accurate wind measurements over land are difficult because of the effects of nearby buildings, trees, etc. At the end of a jetty this anemometer is quite well exposed, you can read more details on the "About this Station" page. |
|
What Beaufort force is the wind blowing at? |
My version of the Beaufort wind scale can be viewed here. It's more or less the same as the official one but easier to remember! |
|
Why is the rain in mm... I prefer inches? |
I prefer inches too and the rain gauge measures in multiples of 0.01". However using inches resulted in errors on some of the diagrams so they are drawn in units of mm - sorry! |
|
Why does the "Daily Precipitation" show about 0.3mm when it hasn't rained? |
One reason might be some morning dew which was enough to tip the rain gauge bucket - or I may have knocked the rain gauge while servicing it! How rain is measured is described on the "Explanation of Units" page. |
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Why do you call it "precipitation" when you mean rain? |
"Precipitation" includes rain, drizzle, hail, sleet, snow, and anything else which causes water to drip into the rain gauge! |
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It's drizzling outside so why does your weather station say it's dry? |
If the rain is too light it may not fill the rain gauge. How rain is measured is described on the "Explanation of Units" page. |
|
What atmospheric pressure do you measure? |
The barometer sensor is actually inside my house. The pressure reading is corrected approximately to mean sea level (not allowing for temperature). The absolute accuracy should be better than 0.5mb and the relative accuracy better than that. |
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Why don't you update the "latest weather" data more frequently? |
There are limits on the amount of data I can transmit over my broadband connection. However the time series graphs show the data at full time resolution. |
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Can I get the data direct from the weather station? |
The weather station sends the data over a wireless link. If you live within range (about 100 to 300m) and have a Davis Vantage Pro console or Weather Envoy you should be able to receive it - but don't buy receiving gear without talking to me first! |
|
What Weather Station should I buy? |
It all depends what you want it for... I'm happy to give advice. |
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Why does the graph or dial look really strange? |
If it looks all odd colours or like a corrupted picture it may be your browser downloaded it while it was being updated, try refreshing your browser. |
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Why is the time in the banner older than the "Latest Weather" time? |
I may have turned the "WeatherCat" program off in the recent past... the banner uses average values which only become available after 10 minutes of sampling, please wait! |
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Why don't the banner values refresh automatically on all the weather pages? |
If I set the page to update automatically your browser will keep downloading data all the time that page is open even if you are not viewing it - therefore only the "Latest Weather" page is set to update automatically |
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Why does the humidity go down when the temperature goes up? |
On the graphs I plot the "Relative Humidity" because that is what most people understand. However it does vary with temperature. I could plot "Dew Point" but most people find that hard to interpret |
| If you have a question which is not answered in any of the FAQ's categories please email me at peter@seatern.org.uk |
