The "Weather Pole"
This photo showcases the complete 20 foot high
weather pole and the weather sensors that are mounted to it.
Wind Vane & Anemometer
Mounted at the very top of the 20ft weather pole extention are the wind vane and anemometer.
Their job is to measure wind direction and wind
speed.
The Wind Vane: (arrow pointer) measures wind direction by pointing into the wind as it blows. Depending on which way it's pointing a corresponding directional signal is sent to the base station where it is interpreted and logged as wind direction in degrees from true north.
The Anemometer: (spinning cups) measures the speed or how fast the wind is blowing. The faster the wind blows, the faster
the cups spin. As the cups spin in relation to the wind speed, a pulsed signal is sent to the base station where it is interpreted and logged as current wind speed and max wind gust.
Hygro-Thermometer & Rain Gauge
Mounted 7ft high on the weather pole main body
are the hygro-thermometer and rain gauge.
Hygro-Thermometer: The natrually aspirated ambient weather radiation shield
houses the hygro-thermometer. The Radiation sheild (vented looking round thing) allows the
hygro-thermometer to take highly accurate measurments of the air's humidity and temper-
ature without being affected by solor or reflected radiation and also protects the sensor from rain, snow and ice.
Rain Gauge: The electronic rain gauge is mounted in the rain gauge shelf located directly
over the vented Hygro-Thermometer radiation
shield. It's job is to measure rain fall rate and rain fall amount.
How It Works: The rain gauge is of the
"tilting bucket" type. It's comprised of a
special funnel that catches rain fall droplets.
Directly under this funnel is a special bucket
called a tilting bucket. It looks like a see-saw
with sides that is divided in half at the pivot point and open at both ends (sort of a divided in half open ended trough).
As rain drops are collected by the funnel and fall through, they fill one side of the divided see-saw trough to the point that it tips. As it tips, the water collected dumps out the open end and the other side of the see-saw trough aligns under the funnel to catch more rain drops. This process of tiping back and forth continues as long as rain is falling.
Each side of the tip bucket is calibrated
to match the collection area of the funnel.
Each tip of the bucket equals .01 inch of rain.
25 tips would be .25 or one quarter inch of rain.
100 tips would equal 1 inch of rain and so on.
Barometer: The barometric pressure sensor is an integral part of the base station. It's purpose is to measure the atmospheric pressure. Barometric pressure is a good indication of weather trend.
Base Station: The base station is located indoors and is connected to a HP desk top computer. This computer is dedicated to the
base station and it's data, as well as to the live weather camera and it's live streaming video.
The base station collects data from the outdoor sensors, processes it, and logs it into the HP
computer. The HP computer, then in turn, sends the data to Weather Underground and to the WeatherBug network via broadband DSL.
*Data is collected from the outdoor weather
sensors and updated every 2 seconds.
So Yes, the information you see here really is...
Real-Time Live.