New Anemometer Installation

definitely…

speaking of HOA’s ( how does one pronounce that?.. thought so…) anyway, the day program supervisor bought a house on the south side of town, across the street is a group HOA… so he comes home, sits on his deck, takes a well earned cool brew and watches as two people mowing their lawn, measure the grass height with a ruler to make it conform with the HOA standards of grass height.

I guess HOA’s are places where people who have too much time on their hands go to live… and I thought those people were programmers.

However, I do recommend two things, get your vote and move the anenometer, or put a for sale sign out front, move, sell to a low life form family and laugh about it.

Niko,

First of all, a WeatherBug reporting station that is less than two miles away reported a 52 mph wind gust. Yes, I know, microclimate. Second of all, I was outside when the strongest winds came and the trees were swaying like I had never seen before. I was in the middle of a street around where I live taking pictures of the clouds and a trash can came rolling down right towards me at like 15-20 mph.

Chuck,

Yes, that makes more sense now. I just didn’t understand what you meant. Thanks. :wink:

Aardvark,

I will see what I can do after I get the votes. It will probably depend on what they put in the bylaws.

–Tim

Tim,

For the vast majority of us we can never achieve a perfect placement for our weather stations and that is more true for wind measurements then any other aspect as the standard calls for “anemometers should be sited at least twice as far downwind from an object as the height of the object” so if a tree or other object is 50 feet tall your anemometer should be at least 100 feet from the object.

In most residential areas this would be all but impossible to meet completely and most of us select the site as best we can…

-Bob

Bob,

Yes, I understand that…It’s just that it’s disappointing to know that I went through all of that and it’s still not the best that I can get it.

–Tim

That’s not true. It IS the best that YOU can get it without doing yet more work. The fact that others can do better by having their anemometers mounted at 10m in an open field means that they can do better than you. The important thing for you is that your wind speeds are probably now higher than they would have been with your anemometer mounted on your back fence.

Chris,

That is true (meaning I agree with your point ;)), but do you understand what I mean by how I’m frustrated?

–Tim

So in essence you are frustrated because you don’t live underground on a featureless, treeless, grass covered property of at least 10 acres, with no zoning restrictions so that you can mount your anemometer on a 10 meter mast, and the rest of your weather station at the perfect location?

[quote author=nikoshepherd

Tim,

Despite your impression I don’t see that there is any real proof that your wind reading is very incorrect, unless you know that the anemometer is blocked in some particular direction. I really doubt that where you were, which I’m assuming was down on the street in between the houses, experienced higher wind gusts than where your anemometer is up on the roof - unless the houses caused some local funneling effect. What I’m trying to say is that a) wind is a very hard thing to measure except very local to the instrument, b) your wind gust may well be correct for your general location, c) within the limits of accuracy and response time of the device it was almost certainly correct for the anemometer location, d) you have made a very good effort to optimize your weather station installation for your particular location, e) there’s no reason to be frustrated by things you cannot reasonably change.

[quote author=nikoshepherd

Wow, is it unusual to get high winds where you are?

I would hope that the airport had a better reading , however, I have an airport 3 miles to the south and the NOAA about 5 miles to the NW. Adding the local weather stations and the other personal weather stations and I say it isn’t that bad. I wouldn’t complain about not getting a 51 mph wind. We also had a storm about 31 mph here that took out several branches of peaches.

Anyway, I think the idea of the multiple weather stations that are not government, is to get a better picture of how the weather /climate is represented. One of the big cavets of a personal weather station is that it is just that.

It doesn’t take much wind to wipe out trees, ( or mother in law on a broom)
So hang in there and good luck.

[quote author=nikoshepherd

any other personal stations in the town?

No…The next closest (accurate) one is about 10-15 minutes away.

I believe that I had a higher gust than any other reporting station within 20-25 minutes of me, but I really don’t know how their setup is.

–Tim

if the trees aren’t used to high winds when they are in leaf then they will break more easily at this time of year, but I wonder if you had some downward wind thing that wouldn’t register correctly on an anemometer.

[quote author=nikoshepherd

Sorry, a microburst, couldn’t think of the word when I was typing #-o

[quote author=nikoshepherd

I think you would need more info about what happened in the general area to start to make that determination. I suggest you look up microburst and see if it seems likely.