Journal for Scrib's Weather Station

2025-10-24: After more troubleshooting, the intermittent "N/A" problem seems to have resolved itself--at least for the time being. I may eventually have to replace the super capacitor, but for now it's wait and see.

2025-10-14: After some time of intermittent problems with temperature and humidity readings (often rendered as "N/A") I finally ordered and today installed a new temperature and humidity sensor. So far, everything seems to be working fine.

2025-09-05: For several days now, the station has not been properly registering some data, particularly temperature and humidity, but it is back in service now thanks to superb technical help from Drew and Davis Instruments. He spent about 15 minutes on the phone troubleshooting with me and let me know what to do if this happens again. Amazing customer support from Drew and Davis Instruments!

2025-04-28: We had another major swing between the high (80.2) and the low (39.4) today: 40.8 degrees! As I have commented before, a 30-degree swing in spring or fall is not unusual, but 40 degrees or more is something else.

2024-01-26: Baltimore set a record high for this date, 80 degrees. I don't have an easy way to check my data for a particular date, but the high reading of 77.5 on this weather station today is most likely a record, too. On 2024-01-17, the low was 9.3. That 68.2 degree spread in just 10 days might also be a record.

2023-12-12: Many months after having had to relocate the computer that runs the weather station, and after having disconnected the webcam, I have finally found another spot for the USB webcam. It now looks almost directly east into our back yard from the second floor. We will have to see just how much sky and weather will show up (especially when the trees are all leafed out), given all of the trees in the line of sight.

2023-06-28: Finally! The NWS weather radar KLWX is back up!

2023-06-27: For some days now, the radar image (KLWX) has not been available. After finally doing some searching today, I found a notice saying "Radar down for maintenance". Here's hoping the image is available again soon!

2023-06-24: Rain amounts and rain rates for today and the previous three days are wrong: The rain collector was clogged, and when I unclogged it this morning, the accumulated water went through and registered all at once. The measured rain rate of 33.88 in/hr is definitely not real!

2023-01-01: For several months now, the radar image on the main page has not been working. The National Weather Service changed a number of things, and I did not have the time or the expertise even to try to figure out what had happened. Today I finally was able to spend a little time trying to get the radar image back--but I was unsuccessful. Fortunately, friend and html expert Mike Tennor again came to the rescue. He solved the problem in just a few minutes, so the radar image is finally back again!

2022-08-17: For a day or so, the outside temperature had been registering way too high. The problem turned out to be a dead battery in the ISS (the data collection unit). After the battery was replaced and the system had time to restart, all components have been functioning properly. The graphs for the last 24 hours will have straight lines for the period when the battery was dead, and other readings for today will be wrong if they are based on the last high temperature (80.9) that was recorded before the battery died.

2022-03-29: We've had a brief spell of very winter-like weather yesterday and today. Yesterday: low temp 25.1, low wind chill 20.6, high wind speed 18, high temp 39.9, with snow showers in various parts of town. Today: low temp 22.0, low wind chill 19.3, high wind speed 11, though the high temp did get up to 46.2, thanks partly to lots of bright sunshine).

2022-03-16: Our Internet service went out yesterday afternoon--right when a Verizon tech was doing something in the junction box at the end of our driveway. We had to wait till today to get another tech out to fix the problem, which was the fact that the previous tech had disconnected us! But we are back online as of about 10:40 a.m. today.

2022-03-07: According to the Baltimore Sun today, "The Baltimore region shattered an almost 50 year record Monday, with a record high temperature of 77 degrees, the National Weather Service said." The high registered on this weather station was 77.4. It was also quite windy, with a high wind speed of 28 mph.

2022-02-20: Today was noteworthy for the great difference between the low and the high for the day: 42.4 degrees. As I have commented previously (on 2020-02-23, 2017-02-18, and 2016-06-11), 30-degree swings in one day are not very unusual in spring and fall, but a 42.4 degree swing in February is highly unusual.

2021-08-20: Rainfall total for today includes the rain total for yesterday, but the times and rates of rainfall are completely wrong. Because of an ankle issue, I was not able to get out on the roof to clean out the rain collector before this latest storm, so when I cleaned it out today, all the collected rainfall came through at once.

2021-08-13: Though it may have happened before, this is the first time I can recall that we have had three days in a row with a high temperature of 100 degrees or more.

2021-06-22: Because the two forecasts made the main page too busy, and because the forecasts really didn't provide much useful information, I decided not to publish them after all.

2021-06-20: I recently discovered that WeatherCat has the capability to display the weather forecasts, both general and shorter term, from the Davis Vantage Pro 2 Plus console. So today I modified the main page to display those brief forecasts.

2021-06-15: Thanks to a question in the WeatherCat forums about restoring data, and thanks to a response that pointed to a wiki article, I was able to restore almost 7 years of weather data, all now available in the "Historical Data" tab. I cannot get back data from the first 2 weeks of June this year, but that is a lot better than losing 7 years of data!

2021-06-14: A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of upgrading to Big Sur the MacBook Pro that runs this website--without confirming the compatibility of the serial-to-usb adapter that connects the weather console to the computer. The WeatherCat program runs fine on Big Sur, but the computer wouldn't recognize the weather console. After many hours of trying to get everything to work, I finally had to downgrade the computer system, a task that was more than a little complicated, too. After solving an ftp problem, I finally got everything working again. Unfortunately, though I still have the data from 2015 through May 2021, WeatherCat isn't accessing that data for the "Historical Data" page. That's something else tow work on!

2021-05-30: According to The Washington Post (in a note on page B4 on 2021-05-31), today had the coolest high, 58, on this date since 1915, when the temperature reached only 57. This weather station registered a high of only 53.9, which is likely a record, too. It has been a remarkable cold spell.

2021-05-26: A severe thunderstorm and high winds buffeted our neighborhood today. Two of our large, mature trees--a tulip poplar in the side yard and a maple in the back yard--were so badly damaged that they had to be removed entirely. Fortunately, the tops of the trees missed the house when they were blown down, but they came close. The anemometer registered 33 mph, but, given that the anemometer is surrounded by high trees and is not high enough to measure true windspeed, the actual wind speed could have been twice that.

2021-02-09: My brother pointed out that the webcam picture had not been updating for a long while--it was showing an image from September 2020! Somehow the code for displaying the webcam image and the time-lapse movie had been changed, but it has now been fixed.

2021-02-01: Friend Mike Tennor came to the rescue again. Because I had been unable to figure out how to get a radar display back on the main page after changes by the National Weather Service, I asked Mike for help. He found a radar display that could be incorporated into the web page. Unfortunately, this display does not have the road map overlay, but at least the radar shows. I'll keep looking for a way to show a road map overlay.

2020-12-25: On 2020-12-17, the National Weather Service changed the way the public accesses their data, including radar data. I have not yet been able to figure out how to replicate the radar display that used to be on the main page of this website--but I'll continue trying.

2020-11-30: I realized a few days ago that the drop-down tab for "This Year" on the "Current Conditions" page wasn't working, but I didn't have a chance to try to fix it until today. In modifying the html to make that fix, I noticed that I did not have an "All Time" dropdown tab, so I added that, too.

2020-11-13: For a few days--up until today--the weather radar was not displaying properly. The image was there, but no clouds or rain showed up at all. I tried to figure out what was going on, but the only thing I found out was that the Sterling radar display is going to change on December 8. Then, all of a sudden, today the radar image was back as usual. I still wonder what happened.

2020-11-09: Today I installed version 3.1.1 of WeatherCat.

2020-11-07: It has been a wild time lately, so I was very slow in trying to fix a problem with uploading the data--FTP errors started happening two days ago. But it was an easy fix: somehow the MacBook Pro running WeatherCat got knocked off the wifi. As soon as I turned that back on, everything was fine.

2020-10-10: For the past couple of weeks or so, the radar at the Sterling, VA, National Weather Service office, which provides the radar image on this site, has been off-line. I was happy to see that today the radar is back online.

2020-10-07: The replacement temperature/humidity sensor arrived yesterday, and I installed it today without issue. According to the instructions, the new sensor, when used with my model of weather station, registers 0.9 degees Fahrenheit too high for the outdoor temperature, so I followed the instructions for calibration, and it should now be providing the correct temperature. The 0.13 inches of rain registered was not real rain; for some reason, the console, though turned off, registered the movement of the rain collector as actual rain.

2020-09-29: Now it is clear that both the temperature sensor and the humidity sensor are not functioning properly. I ordered a replacement module from ScientificSales.com and took the website offline until I can replace the sensor.

2020-09-24: After several days of seeing a message saying that "Radar data are temporarily unavailable for this location," I checked the National Weather Service site and saw a notice that included the following: "THE KWLX (STERLING, VA) WSR-88D [RADAR] REMAINS OUT OF SERVICE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. . . . TECHNICIANS FROM THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE RADAR OPERATIONS CENTER WILL ARRIVE IN STERLING ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, TO DIAGNOSE THE FAILURE."

2020-09-14: Today I remembered to try to check the humidity sensor, so I got out on the sunroom roof and wiped off all the sensors (there were no leaves in the rain collector yet). We'll see if that makes any difference with the humidity measurement, which now is about the same as shown in the Dark Sky app.

2020-09-10: The humidity sensor is obviously having a problem today: It has been misting or raining all day (it is now 1419), but the humidity has not registered more than 70-some percent. Once the rain stops and I can get back out on the sunroom roof, I'll see if I can clear the sensor.

2020-08-23: Today I finally figured out a way to make sure that the UV and Solar Radiation graphs are updated every two minutes. I was not able to figure out why they were not being uploaded with the other graphs (all graphs are in the same folder and should be uploaded), but listing them in WeatherCat's Preferences > Custom Web > Additional Files tab does the trick.

2020-08-22: Several nice developments today. First--and by far the most important--friend Mike Tennor identified and fixed a problem with the web pages not displaying properly, and he fixed another problem with the background image on all pages. Thank you, Mike! Also, I fixed a problem that had been bugging me for years--the WeatherCat program was giving an error because it could not save certain files (the directory for those files did not exist.) Also, I discovered that in order to view the updated graphs, sometimes I have to empty the browser cache. It is really nice to have all of those problems solved!

2020-06-19: The rain gauge has been stopped up for a day or two (I cleaned it out this evening), so the rain rates and times are not accurate for that period, though the total rain is probably about right.

2020-02-23: Today, as on 2017-02-18, we had an extremely great difference between the low (21.2) and the high (60.0) temperature. As noted then, we sometimes get a swing of 30 degrees in the spring or fall, but a difference of 38.8 degrees in February is highly unusual.

2019-11-01: Anemometer readings are back--at long last. I had to order a new anemometer, and KNS Handyman Services installed it on the peak of the roof yesterday.

2019-09-24: After several days of not being able to ftp weather data to the web, I finally completed my move to another web host, and the ftp process is finally working again.

2019-09-21: Shortly after checking the rain gauge to make sure leaves were not clogging it up, the anemometer stopped registering. The problem is probably the splicing of the feed line, which has been temperamental, and jiggling the line has not done the trick. It may be time to spring for a new cable.

2019-08-14: Not having been able to display current weather radar on this site for months, a couple of days ago I ran across a way to display the current radar image from the Sterling, VA, station (LWX). Thanks to help from friend Mike Tennor, that image has now been incorporated into this website.

2019-05-17: The battery on the Davis Integrated Sensor Suite ran out of power few days ago, but I have just today had a chance to replace it. When I did, I saw that the rain collector was clogged up, so the rainfall amount shown for today is way, way off--it has been a beautiful, partly sunny day.

2019-04-10: In addition to the wunderground.com problem, there has been a problem with ftp-ing data to the website. Somehow, my IP address has been put on some blacklists, so all connections are being refused. The webhost said Verizon had to get me off the blacklists; Verizon said the problem was my router, so they sent a new one, but that didn't solve the problem. I have been so busy with other things that I have not yet had a chance to run down this problem, so the site will be off indefinitely. Data from my stations can still be accessed at this URL:

                     https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KMDCOLUM16

2019-03-29: A week or so ago, wunderground.com changed something, so the local radar image does not work. I'm in the process of trying to figure out what to do to get it back. Sorry for the inconvenience!

2019-01-14: The rainfall total shown for today (and tomorrow, if any) is from melted snow, not from rain. The day before yesterday (Saturday, 2018-01-12) the first of two bands of snow started to fall; we got about 6 inches here over a period of time that stretched from very late Saturday afternoon into Sunday. A few hours after that, snow started again and continued until late Sunday night' we got about 5 more inches. The sun today melted most or all of the snow that accumulated on the rain collector.

2018-11-26: The rain collector became clogged again over the last couple of days. It is now unclogged, so, though the total rain amounts for the last three days will be approximately correct, the timing of the rainfall will be incorrect.

2018-09-26: It rained extremely hard for 15 minutes or more just after 1900, but the rain gauge was not registering any precipitation, so I thought it must be clogged with leaves. At 1920, I went out on the sunroom roof to clear the rain collector and found that it wasn't clogged, so there must be a sensor or forwarding problem. Checking that out will have to wait till tomorrow at least. In any case, the total amount of rainfall and the rain rates for today will be grossly inaccurate.

2018-09-21: Since sometime yesterday, the only data being recorded was the barometer reading, which comes from the console, not the Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS), which collects all the other data and sends it wirelessly to the MacBook Pro that processes and uploads the data. It turns out that I had not noticed a low-battery warning; replacing the battery and reconnecting the device got everything working again. Unfortunately, there is no way to recapture the missing data.

2018-09-09: The anemometer on this weather station has not been functioning since about 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 8. That has happened sometimes in the past when we have had long periods of rain. Rain has continued, so I don't know when the anemometer will be functioning again.

2018-08-13: The rain collector was again clogged today: after a 15-minute downpour, the reading showed only 0.04 of an inch. After I unclogged the collector, the reading was 0.46. (So the rain rate of 33.88 in/hr for that period, though it must have been very high, is inaccurate.)

2018-06-03: The rain collector was partially clogged when I checked it today about 1310 and then unclogged it. As a result, though the total rainfall for yesterday and today should be quite accurate, the actual timing of the rain and the rain rates as shown on the graph are inaccurate.

2018-05-30: Today I installed a Rachio 3 sprinkler controller for our irrigation system. Why am I making note of that here? The Rachio 3 is a very sophisticated, wifi-enabled system that, in addition to using NWS forecasts, also uses the data from this weather station (via the Weather Underground) for automatically adjusting the watering schedule. Very cool!

2018-03-22: The 0.46 inches of rain today is, of course, not really rain, but just melting in the rain collector from the approximately 6 inches of snow we got yesterday and the day before.

2018-03-19: WeatherCat announced a new version (3.0), so I upgraded today. Like the previous versions, this one works flawlessly.

2018-02-01: Today I upgraded to Mac OS High Sierra, so the weather station was offline for about half an hour. Fortunately, the upgrade went perfectly smoothly, and WeatherCat is still running flawlessly.

2017-10-16: Version 2.4.3 of WeatherCat was installed today.

2017-09-25: The Anker USB-C hub adapter arrived today, and it worked right out of the box with the serial-to-USB adapter from the Davis weather station console and with the Logitech Pro 9000 webcam.

2017-09-24: After taking the site down for a couple of days, today I finished installing the weather program and related files onto a new MacBook Pro, which is dedicated to the weather station. The previous MacBook Pro, which was installed in December 2010, had performed flawlessly, running 24x7x365 for 3 months shy of 7 years. I'm waiting for another adapter to arrive so that I can get the webcam back online; that should happen within a couple of days.

2017-04-05: What looks like a deluge of rain today at about 0800 (0.23 inches at a rate of 33.88 inches per hour) was simply a result of unclogging the rain gauge and letting through the rain that had accumulated over the past couple of days.

2017-02-18: I noted on 2016-06-11 that we had an unusually great difference between the high and the low in a single day: 38.3 degrees. Today, however--in the middle of February no less!--we experienced an even greater difference: 43.5 degrees (low of 27.5, high of 71.0). Such warm weather in February is extremely unusual, but such a great swing from low to high, especially in a winter month, is unheard of.

2017-01-26: The anemometer started working again early this morning, probably thanks to dryer weather and lots of wind. Lots of rain seems to cause it to stop working, but I have not been able to identify the real source of the problem.

2017-01-23: The anemometer stopped working sometime during the night. This has happened occasionally in the past during rainy weather, but the cause is uncertain. It has been especially windy, beginning during the night, so there may be a mechanical problem with the device. Unfortunately, it is not easily serviceable, so we'll have to see whether the problem corrects itself, as it has in the past.

2016-12-30: The developer of the WeatherCat program continues to add nifty capabilities to the program. I just learned about two new statistical features that compare the current and previous months to the same months in previous years in terms of temperature, precipitation, and wind. (Obviously, the more years of data, the better those statistics are.) Those features have been added to the "Historical Data" page.

2016-12-29: After upgrading to WeatherCat 2.41 yesterday, I was having technical problems. The program seemed to run as usual, but the data were not uploaded to the website (though the radar map was updated properly). The WeatherCat log kept showing "CustomWeb: ***Error*** Couldn't write temporary custom web file. File was: /Users/it/Library/Application Support/WeatherCatCustomWeb/img/[filename]". When I quit the program and restarted it, the data were uploaded once, but only once. When I went into Preferences and tested the FTP server, it uploaded the test file just fine. I was at a loss to identify the problem. It now appears that the problem might have been with the webhost: the problem seems to have resolved itself this afternoon.

2016-12-06: Before I went out of town a week ago, I forgot to clean out the rain collector, which had obviously gotten clogged. As a result, last week's rain was not recorded. Today, after I got home and after more rain, I tried to clean out the collector, but was not entirely successful. Thus, rain readings for today are not accurate either.

2016-10-01: By the time the weather dried up enough for me to get on the roof and check the anemometer connection, it had already started working again, so I took no further acton.

2016-09-29: The anemometer, which has been finicky in the past, stopped registering about midnight last night, so all the wind data from the recent rain storms was not recorded. Moisture may have been the problem, as has sometimes been the case in the past. When the weather dries up, we'll see if that helps; if not, when the roof is dry, I'll get out and try to identify the problem.

2016-09-06: Today I upgraded to version 2.4.0 of Weathercat, the program that provides all the data for this site.

2016-06-11: Today we had an unusually great difference between the high and the low in a single day: 38.3 degrees Fahrenheit, from a low of 57.5 to a high of 95.8. While particularly in the spring and the fall, 30-degree swings are not very unusual, 38.5 is quite uncommon. By way of contrast, when I was in the army and stationed with my family in Bangkok, Thailand, from 1970 to 1972, the swing between the low and the high for the entire time we were there was probably only 40-some degrees. (When the temperature got down to 54, it felt really cold!)

2016-04-02: Sometime yesterday or early today, the anemometer stopped registering. Unfortunately, the outage happened on one of the windiest periods we have had, and, judging from the fact that the wind lifted our patio umbrella completely out of the table, we missed recording what was probably the strongest gust of the year. The anemometer came back on of its own accord, so I'm guessing that the spliced line from the anemometer to the sensing station is still the problem.

2016-02-28: The anemometer is working again as of about 1300 today. The problem seems to be that the splice I had to put in to get the telephone wire long enough is finicky. Here's hoping it stays fixed!

2016-02-24: Looks as if the anemometer quit working about 0330 this morning. Once things dry out, I will see if I can identify the problem.

2016-01-22: This evening was the beginning of a record snowstorm in many parts of the East coast (though I was in Oklahoma and missed the whole thing). Our location got about 29 inches, but that figure is from media reports, not from an actual measurement; I do not have a board for measuring snow, though I do intend to make one. Because some snow mounded up on the weather station's rain collector and later melted, it registers as rain a day or two after the storm, but, of course, those amounts cannot be used as an indication of how much snow we got.

2016-01-10: WeatherCat crashed just before midnight last night, and I didn't notice until after 1330 today. The system is now back up and running, and it looks as if all data from the period when the system was down has been restored. (Thanks to excellent and very quick analysis by the folks at Trixology.com, the makers of WeatherCat, the problem was identified as a font issue; they gave instructions on what to do, and that seems to have taken care of the problem. Kudos to Trixology.com!)

2015-12-08: The system was taken off-line from 0745 to 0800 today while I arranged for a back-up system in case there is a major problem.

2015-12-01: A webcam page was added to the site and to the navigation bar today. The webcam, a Logitech Pro 9000, works well with the WeatherCat software. Unfortunately, I don't have much choice for placement of the webcam; the view from it is rather limited and will be especially so in the spring and summer when the nearby trees have all their leaves.

2015-11-28: Today I added a 7-day graph of temperature, humidity, and pressure to the Historical Data page. WeatherCat 2 has a wonderful capability (under the Tools menu) to create custom graphs.

2015-11-20: On the Currnent Conditions page, I've tried showing different forms of what the weather station produces for current conditions and for forecast, but I have decided to remove both items. Right now, the sky is bright blue and perfectly cloudless, but the station is showing "Overcast"; also, the forecast does not seem particularly helpful. But I wasn't expecting much from a completely automated and very small system.

2015-11-17: Beginning last night, the graphics at the top of the main page were not updating properly, but that problem has now been fixed. Today I have made a few additional tweaks and have also been experimenting with displaying some additional information on the Current Conditions page and on the Historical Data page.

2015-11-16: Having long wanted to be able to document changes and problems with the weather station and website, today I finally figured out how to add a journal page to the template from atkinsfamily.org (now defunct) that is used for this site. In this journal I will perhaps post some comments and will post explanations of anomalies in the weather data (as, for example, when leaves clog up the rain gauge, as has occasionally happened in the past).