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28 April, 2014

Just In Time, Too!

Finally, after months of having a defective station for some pretty poor excuses, Winjama Weather is back up and functioning.

Winjama Weather is up on Weather Underground, Weatherbug, APRS/CWOP, WOW, and PWS Weather. (A quick aside to John - See? It did happen.)

The Automatic Packet Reporting System-Internet Service (APRS-IS)is maintained and operated by volunteer Amateur Radio operators to provide world-wide capabilities to the Amateur Radio APRS RF networks and to promote the Amateur Radio service as a whole.

The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a public-private partnership with three goals: 1) to collect weather data contributed by citizens; 2) to make these data available for weather services and homeland security; and 3) to provide feedback to the data contributors so they have the tools to check and improve their data quality.

PWS Weather - Brings together personal weather station data worldwide from locales not served by primary weather services. PWSweather.com is a partnership between HAMweather, LLC and weatherforyou.com, LLC. The purpose of the program is to bring together data from personal weather stations worldwide, display it and make it available for other purposes.

WOW - Supported by both the UK Department for Education and the Royal Meteorological Society, one of the main aims for the Weather Observations Website (WOW) has always been to provide an interesting real-time tool for helping people learn about the weather.

Most of those letters probably don't mean anything to you and there's no reason that they should either unless you're really into the geeky side of weather information.

Winjama Weather is displayed right here on the blog in the right-hand column. Scroll down a bit and you'll see the pretty blue sticker, as it's called.
Winjama Weather Sticker
The information on the sticker gives you a quick snapshot of current conditions right here at Casa Winjama. If you double-click on the sticker, it'll expand and give you a more detailed look at what's going on weather-wise right here in the south-end of Corozal.

The information displayed is a bit more geekiness right up front:
APRSWXNET Corozal BZ (MD6180) Elev 6 m | 18.38 °N, 88.40 °W

All that means is that Weather Underground (Wunderground for short) is receiving Casa Winjama's weather information from the APRS Weather Network; that Winjama Weather is located in Corozal; MD6180 is the APRS identifier for Winjama Weather, the actual elevation above sea level for the station itself is 6 meters (it's on the roof of our pool house at 19-feet) and the rest is Winjama Weather's actual latitude and longitude.

Once you get through the geekiness, then you get a bit more detailed current weather information, and forecasts for coming attractions, er, weather.

If that's not enough, and if we're in hurricane season, which is coming up directly, the box following will provide you a wealth of hurricane information for the Atlantic Basin and Caribbean Sea.
Winjama Hurricane Sticker
Don't forget, once in a while, to check the far Eastern Pacific reports. Storms have been known to jump from the Pacific to the Caribbean Sea and scare the pants off of all of us - remember Tropical Storm Arthur, anyone?

Have fun, enjoy the weather. Impress your friends and family up north with our humidity and heat indices.




23 comments:

Perry and Mischelle said...

Hi Dave,
Glad to see you're back up and running. I'm just waiting for John at consejo.bz to get his replacement parts for his weather station, hopefully before hurricane season begins. His tropical updates has been moved to his web site, rather that the emails he sent before.
Dave, could I have you change the Corozal Sailing Club, in the blogs I follow section, to the Corozal Bay Sailing Club (www.corozalbaysailingclub.com).
The other redirect goes to an expired page.
Thanks, Perry
Consejo Shores

Dave Rider said...

Hi Perry,

Some day I need to make the long, arduous trek up there to meet John and see his station. He's always been so consistent.
Changes have been made.

Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

I'm doing something wrong, because when I double click your blue weather square to the right I go to:
Corozal, Belize
8:27 PM CST on April 28, 2014 (GMT -0600)
Consejo Shores (ICOROZAL2) Elev 64 ft | 18.45 °N, 88.30 °W

which, I think, must be John's station. I can't get yours to come up. Assistance required, please! LOL

Oh, well, I used to be a geek of sorts for a long time, but I'm slowly getting out distanced.

Julian

Dave Rider said...

Hi Julian,

I don' know how that could happen. I just clicked on it and my station came up. Unless, maybe around the time you checked if mine might have been off the air for some reason, but now it came up correctly.
This all works on the principle of 'FM' anyway - not frequency modulation...
Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

Hmm, I'm still getting:
Corozal, Belize
8:37 AM CST on May 01, 2014 (GMT -0600)
Consejo Shores (ICOROZAL2) Elev 64 ft | 18.45 °N, 88.30 °W |

when I click.

Is anyone else as weird as I seem to be? Or do you get Dave's station?

When I click to change station I get a map of the bay and no station shows up at your location.

Oh well, not the worst thing going right now!!. LOL

Take care,

Julian

Dave Rider said...

Hi Julian,

I don't know what to say. I just clicked on the blue icon on the right hand side and the correct station popped up.

Anyone else getting Julian's results, or heaven forbid, something even more bizarre?

Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

Oh, well, catching you saying that you don't know what to say is rewards enough for clicking the blue block.

Heck, up here I just went through the most amazing non-storm of the decade. On Sunday every site said 2 - 5 " and rain on Mon/Tues/Wed. Then the backpeddling began -- and before it was over we never got a single drop!!! Even canceled a golf game on Wed am and it would have been wonderful that day on the course.

So, weather evidently doesn't act "normally" around me lately, I guess.

Julian

john combe said...

David,

That is great :) And thanks for the mention!!!

However, I was just on Wunderground and did not see it….. WAAAAAAAAAA….. LOL.

Is there something special I need to do????

Dave Rider said...

Hi John,

No, I don't think so at this stage. There's just something AFU with my settings for the station. Wunderground sent me an email saying welcome back that it was 'on the air', when I knew for a fact that it wasn't. I'm trying to track down the problem. Passwords and permissions I think are the big issues. Arrgh!

Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

Hey Dave,

I don't know whether this tidbit will help or not but I clicked on your weather icon on my iPad yesterday and bang -- went to your station, slick as...

But, came up here to my pc this am to let you know you'd fixed it and - rats - went straight to the same ICOROZL2 station.

I have no idea how it can be machine dependent but there you are. I hope this info helps...

Good luck!

Julian

Dave Rider said...

Hi Julian,

I've been getting the same thing. In fact, I just checked and it's down again.
I'm guessing at this point, but I think the transmitter is funky, so I've ordered a new one. Hopefully, it will get here somewhat soon and will solve the problem.
Keep an eye on it.

Cheers,
Dave

Mr. Pancho said...

Dave,
Just a thought, maybe if you feed the weather station some Chicken, Rice and beans and fried plantain it will know it is in Belize.

Rodney

Dave Rider said...

Hi Rodney,

That just might work!

Seriously, though, I think I may have narrowed down the problem, I'm just not sure how to fix it. The receiver is located at the far end of the house from the transmitter. Might be too many walls/wood/metal for the signal to get through all the time. I'm trying to figure out how to jury rig an external wire antenna to the receiver. I'll keep working on it - and checking its diet.

Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

Ye haaaaasah!!!

I have now reached (and held) the altitude of 19ft at ICOROZAL3.

You have done the improbable, Dave. Well done. Either a new transmitter or you are just standing out there holding it just right!

Only to find a temp of 93.6 and humidity over 50%. Wow... off to the pool you go!

Regards (and congrats),

Julian

Dave Rider said...

Thanks Julian,
I wish I could say it was due to some snappy technical ability, but my latest guess is that I need to reposition the receiver so it 'receives' better. I'm still not sure why it's working better now. I haven't done anything other than threaten it with bodily harm.
Also, you might have noticed that the station is down at night, not my preferred way, but when you have it on your only PC, there you go. Maybe some day I'll get an old, crappy PC (Oh, wait - that's what I have now!) to house the station software and it can stay up 24/7.
Glad you like the info. The other day when the air was like glue, the temp was 96 and the rel. humidity was 99%.
Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

Dave, you may have done it! This is the second (or third) day in row that ICOROZAL3 has come up working fine.

Thanks!

Julian

Dave Rider said...

Hi Julian,

I just wish I had more confidence in just what it was that I did to fix it!

Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

You're still "on the air" with ICOROZAL3. But I happened to notice that the chance of rain only dipped once to 60% chance -- all the other days were 80% and above. Wow...

Can you get in the pool with an umbrella?

Julian

Dave Rider said...

Hi Julian,

Believe it or not, we have been in the pool a few times, but like now, for the past two days, we haven't.

Hard to get excited when you've got 'Oregon Sky Blue' completely filling the heavens (otherwise known as gray, threatening clouds).

This is getting to be depressing. It was one of the reasons we left the Great Northwest.

Oh well, when the sun does shine, it's glorious! So I suppose it all evens out.

Cheers,
Dave

jhcombe.com said...

WAAAAAA…. My favorite Weather Station is down. LOL

Dave Rider said...

Hi John,

I know, I know. It was working so well, too. I guess I'm going to have to go up on the roof and replace the transmitter - see if that cures the problem. Bummer!

Cheers,
Dave

JRinSC said...

Just checking on y'all down there in Corozal. Hope all is ok...

Julian

Dave Rider said...

Hi Julian,

Yeah, I know, I'm behind again. I sense a grab bag coming up. Lotsa little stuff to report on soon soon, as they say here.

Cheers,
Dave