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.

Don't Trust Her

It just felt like we were cruising along a little too easily. We were. Here comes this babe just strolling along the waterways. I hear her name is Chantal. Now, isn't that just about the most seductive name you've ever heard of?

It rolls off the tongue so easy, it just oozes romantic and perfume-laden tropical nights, breezes wafting in off the water, palm trees gently swaying, with hints of exciting things to come...

The name alone just lulls you into this reverie of seductive melancholy. I mean, for us here in Belize, even the computer models show her turning north. Poor Cuba and Haiti, but they get whacked every year anyway.

Chantal - Computer Modelling

I mean, even laying on the possible storm-center location circles, we're still safe and cuddly. Chantal wouldn't disturb our being pleasantly adrift in a daydream would she? The word, 'perfumey' even suggests that she's the sweetest, most darling girl one could imagine...

Chantal - 5-Day Tracking Chart

 But, wait a minute there, sailor. Let's stop and take a quick glance at this dame's history - well, maybe not hers in particular, but some just like her, at this same date and location through the years. Uh huh! Just what I thought. She could be the kind of girl who kisses you lightly on the cheek, whispers some delightful promises in your ear, and wham! Drops you just as you've convinced yourself it really is love.

Chantal - Historical Tracking Chart

Then you wake up only to discover the hotel room's a wreck, you're hung over, your wallet's gone... Chantal! No, say it isn't so!

Reality sets in. If only you'd paid attention to the past. You might've been forewarned. I mean, just look at that last chart. Some of those tracks just keep coming straight at us. Perfumey strolls in the moonlight, my eye. She could be downright dangerous.

Keep your pants on and your hand on your wallet. You'd better just sleep lightly for the next several nights and stay alert during the days too. Take the time now to do some planning of what you might need to do to get ready for the real action.

A quick word about the charts - I 'borrowed' them from the Weather Underground website (http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at201303_5day.html) where you can find a ton of information, not only about Chantal, but about tropical storms and hurricanes in general. Our weather station even shows up on their website (http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ICOROZAL3). You should be checking this and other weather sources at least a couple times a day throughout the season. Your life might just depend on it.

Don't forget to check out our Hurricane Preparedness Checklist (http://winjama.blogspot.com/2009/06/hurricane-preparedness.html). We update it and use it every year. I'll even email you a copy of it if you want. Just use our new 'Contact WINJAMA' in the right-hand column. Make sure to include your email address, and I'll get a copy of off to you.

Ernesto - Whazzup?

Make up your mind will ya? The computer models (http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at201205_model.html) show you possibly going south of us or possibly north of us... What that makes me think of, is that you're planning to go right over the top of us. Which is it?

North of us is probably the best for us. South probably means more wind and heavy rains. Right over us kind of speaks for itself.

Dr. Jeff Masters, who started the Weather Underground, in his daily weather blog (http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html), says "Ernesto's survival into today means that the storm now potentially poses a formidable threat to the Western Caribbean."That's enough to cause some real pucker-power, if you know what I mean

I'm thinking right now that Sunday is probably going to be a busy day for us here at Casa Winjama. I'm guessing we'll be taking down the swimming pool awning, among other things, and doing all the other preparedness things we've mentioned in our Hurricane Preparedness Checklist (http://winjama.blogspot.com/2010/05/dust-off-plan.html). This page, with the link to the checklist, also has links to several other worthwhile hurricane-related sites.

For those of us living in Belize, LOVE-FM (http://www.lovefm.com/) is the radio station du jour during events like this. Their frequencies range from 88.9, (94.7 in Corozal - thanks to Alan), 95.1, to 98.1 (MHz) - just like it says in one of their on-air jingles. They do a surprisingly good job of letting you know what is happening throughout the country. Plus, they have a generator, so they're likely to stay on the air in the event of power disruptions.

I forgot to add a thing here...

The chart shown below in color is the one everybody looks at. It's good for providing some information about possible and projected tracks for storms, but it doesn't give a real good feeling for the possible areas that will be affected by high winds and heavy rains. In that regard, it can be misleading.

Tracking Cone

Here's a graphic showing the same storm, Ernesto of course. As you can see by the larger shaded area, the danger zone is quite a bit larger. It's always worthwhile to keep that in mind as you prepare. Thanks to the National Hurricane Center for producing the images.

Mariner's 1-2-3 Rule

 For a fairly understandable definition of the 'Mariner's 1-2-3 rule,' see Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_forecasting)

In the meantime, I'm staying glued to the laptop and will be checking the reports and track forecasts for Ernesto pretty religiously throughout the next few days.

As my friend Charles always says, "Stay safe."

Cheers

Getchur Weather Right Here

Winjama Weather. Right here in Corozal, Belize (NOTE: This is a followup to my original weather post of a few days ago.). Get accurate weather conditions from right here in Corozal (actually, from right on top of my guesthouse), instead of  from the Chetumal Airport or from Goldson International Airport in Belize City. Here's some links where you can find my station's weather reported (Or, you can just click on the Winjama Weather link in the right column and bypass all this):

http://www.pwsweather.com/obs/WINJAMAWX.html

Personal Weather Stations (PWS) - Current Corozal weather (WINJAMAWX is my station's identifier on pwsweather.com). PWS has a nice and easy to understand layout. PWSweather.com is a partnership between HAMweather, LLC and weatherforyou.com, LLC. The purpose is to bring together data from personal weather stations worldwide and display it so that it can be easily accessed by anyone on the Internet.

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ICOROZAL3

Weather Underground - You'll find current Corozal weather (ICOROZAL3 is my station's identifier on Weather Underground). Weather Underground delivers free, reliable, real-time and accurate online weather information worldwide to millions of Web users.

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?DW6180 - Current Corozal weather from Winjama Station (my station).

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=DW6180 - Google Earth Winjama station's location

findU is a database archiving weather data which comes from an Internet-based system called the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP). CWOP collects weather data and in turn, makes it available for anyone. There are over 8,000 registered CWOP members world-wide. CWOP members send their weather data by internet to findU where it is then sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who then distributes the data to over 500 organizations, such as:

• National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices
• National Transportation Safety Board
• NASA - Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and many others

http://weatherforyou.com/personal_weather_stations/maps/international.php

Weatherforyou.com - If you click on the station located over Belize, you should get brief local Corozal weather from my station, WINJAMAWX.

Thousands of Personal Weather Stations fill the gaps between professional government and commercial weather stations. Weatherforyou.com provides weather information, much of which cannot be found elsewhere, and all without distracting pop-up or animated advertising.

It might sound like a lot of work on my part. All I do is sit and watch the little whirly-gig whiz around. Everything else is done by the computer. Actually, I spent some amount of time getting the station set up and figuring out through the, at times, obtuse instructions from the various sites, how to send Winjama weather to each location. Once that was done, barring accidents, it's just sit back, have a cool one, and observe. Hmmm, I wonder. Is that why they call them weather observers?

Whether Or Not There's Weather

It's taken me some time to get my new weather station up and running. Operator error, as usual. After I took the outside station down in preparation for Hurricane Richard, before I put it back up, I partially dismantled it trying to find out why it wasn't transmitting to the base unit in the house.

Screenshot of Our Weather Station Software

As luck would have it, as I said, operator error. I had installed one of the rechargeable batteries wrong, as you do. I thought I was being so careful. Ah well, at least I found the error and corrected it.

Anyway, now on the right-hand column you see a new item Winjama Weather. It uses the Weather Underground (http://www.wunderground.com) Website as the host for our weather reports which are generated by our very own weather station mounted atop a 7-foot pole on our guesthouse roof.

To get to our Weather Underground page you can click on the link at right or click on this URL: (http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ICOROZAL3). Now, you can keep as up-to-date as we do with the local weather. Ain't technology grand?