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.

Winjama Weather is Back!

For those of you who used to rely on Winjama Weather for accurate South End Corozal weather, it's back!

All it took was totally replacing the old weather station with a new, spiffy station. What was the delay, you might ask?

Well, some relatively major (for us) construction, and rehabbing projects, a major accident with lifestyle changes, procrastination (which I'm really good at), and some other stuff that I've forgotten about, that's all.

We solved it by purchasing, at long last, a new weather station, made by AcuRite. This is a nice machine, but I have to say, their corporate support as far as registering the station with them, in a word, sucks. They will only allow you to register if you live in the US, Canada, UK, and a couple of other countries. If you're in Belize or other countries not on their list, take a hike.

The same, thankfully, does not apply to WeatherUnderground (https://www.wunderground.com/). It works like magic, and we even got to keep our old station ID, etc. Look on the right-hand column of the blog and you'll see Winjama Weather. You might have to click on the image to get it to refresh.

Winjama Weather is Back!

Fresh and up-to-date weather information at your fingertips, for the Corozal South End, and the best part of it is, that now Winjama Weather is online 24/7. No more shutting it down when I turn my desktop PC off at night.

Heads Up!

You can look at it as a practice session or a training exercise. Our first numbered event - a tropical wave (Invest93L) is approaching us. Well, it's at least approaching Nicaragua and Honduras, and possibly the more southern parts of Belize. It's rated right now as having about a 10% chance of developing into something more substantial.

Invest 93L Computer Models

If you haven't yet started following your favorite weather source on at least a daily basis (preferably as a minimum - morning, noon, and evening) now would be a good time to develop the habit.

Of course you can check current local conditions here at Casa Winjama by looking in the right-hand column. It's pretty accurate, for the most part, except when it goes off on it's own and calling for light snow with 80° degree temps, but that's another story altogether.

My favorite weather source is (www.wunderground.com) but there's lots to choose from. Be sure to get one with a desktop widget, or gadget, or whatever Micro$oft is calling it in Windows8. It makes for a quick and convenient way to stay abreast of things weatherwise.

Just be aware, that over the next two or three days, we're probably going to get some rain and gusty winds. If you're using cisterns, this might also be a good time to check that all systems are go in that regard.

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