Look, Up in the Sky...

It's not a bird, it's not a plane, It's super weather!

It's our new weather station, an AcuRite (http://acurite.com) 5-in-1Weather Station. It tracks and records the current wind direction (including previous two wind directions), wind speed, peak wind speed (gusts), indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, rainfall totals (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and all-time), 12- to 24-hour forecast, barometric pressure, storm alerts based on it barometric readings, a weather ticker, heat index, and other information.

External Battery Pack

Since the new station is now ten-feet above the roof, a nice feature was to get an external battery pack that I mounted on a convenient nearby wall. This saves me having to climb a ladder to change batteries. Which, I shouldn't have to do all that often as the batteries are simply a back-up to the solar cells that power the unit itself.

The New Station

Here, you can see the station, way up in the air. It's advantageous to have it elevated because that keeps it from being affected by reflected heat from the roof, wind shadowing from nearby trees and structures, etc.

Station Detail

A close up of the clean design. But, all is not perfect. The equipment is first-rate. It was easy to assemble and was very easy to connect it to my router and the intertubes. However, the company is squirrelly in one other important way.

For whatever reason, they only recognize addresses from the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia. If you live anywhere else, the date on the AcuRite web servers will be skewed.
Let me explain. My billing address, since I used a US credit card to purchase the station, is in Olympia, WA, USA. Their software takes that address as the 'working' address and location of the station. It will not let you change it to wherever you actually live. So, my station's data is for Belize but appears as being from Olympia. Why? Who knows? Customers have been complaining about this for almost a year on their company blog, to no effect.

Although you shouldn't have to put up with this ridiculous defect in their software, there is an easy way around the problem. That's to ignore any weather pumped out from AcuRite's servers. Simply register your station with WeatherUnderground (http://www.wunderground.com). You can also register your station with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service (https://www.weather.gov/lkn/volunteering.html).

The weather from Winjama Weather will also eventually go to Belize Hydromet (http://www.hydromet.gov.bz) and be part of the data they use for local forecasting and reporting.

Other than that non-sensical problem with AcuRite's website software, the equipment works well, and Winjama Weather is 'on-the-air' 24/7 and provides accurate, and up-to-the-minute weather for south Corozal Bay.

You can track the local weather from our blog, or you can download a 'sticker' as Wunderground calls them and simply plug Winjama's Wunderground identifier (icorozal3) into it, and keep track of Winjama weather that way.

If it's not Super Weather you're after, maybe it's Super Kitties!

I missed getting my camera in time to capture Noel and April, both on the roof, thinking they were too cool for words, finding this new area to play in.

Noel and the New Playground

That was actually a couple of days ago. I captured these images of Noel yesterday. And, this morning, as Dianna and I were enjoying our morning coffee on the veranda, Dianna looked up and, sure enough, there was Noel, exploring the heights once again.

Noel Testing the Net

Here she is, testing the net to make sure it will support her weight. I suspect that eventually, the kitties will be all over the roof area over the pool.

Sure-Footed

Being the smart kittie that she is, Noel is taking no chances by staying over the beams as she traverses the span of the roof.