Carl's Weather Blog

Power outage that lasted several hours

2009-09-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today at about 3:30pm the power transformer supplying power to the weather station lost all of it's oil and blew the fuse on the utility poll. Took Seattle City Light until about 7:15pm to get the transformer replaced and restore power. The backup battery powered the weather station and the computer running it until 4:30pm. All weather data between 4:30pm and 7:15pm was never collected. No measurable precipitation fell during this time frame.

Outage 07-31-2009

2009-08-01T01:10:00.000-07:00

Friday morning at about 5:45am the weather station stopped sending data to the server. This is a known bug on the Oregon Scientific WMR100A's, I hear if I find a WMR200 receiver it corrects the problem. Anyway, at about 4:15pm I was able to get to the receiver and reset it. Everything is back to normal now. All data between 5:45am and 4:15pm was lost as it was never recorded. No measurable precipitation during this time frame.

Record heat and wildfire!

2009-07-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to say I survived it!
The weather station on Wednesday July 29th 2009 recorded a high temperature of 103.5 degrees F. Seatac which is the official Seattle record keeping station recorded a high of 103 degrees F. This broke the all time high record sense record keeping begin in 1891.

On that same day, a large wild fire broke out on Lake Ballinger Island. The island is a peat bog, making it particularly difficult for fire crews to put out the fire. Ash was falling all evening through out North Ridge, North City and Echo Lake, probably other areas as well as the wind changed. Almost the entire island was engulfed in flames. I walked down towards the lake to get a better view with my camera and sat down on the side of 1st Ave NE at about 200th, next to Ballinger common's apartments and started taking photos. The island was almost completely engulfed by the time I turned around and started heading back home. Below is one of the few pictures I snapped of the burning island.

You can view the rest of the images here: http://thecarl.smugmug.com/gallery/9102352_45fBE#606506939_SyCF5

More snow fall...

2009-02-10T23:02:00.000-08:00

It snowed all day and evening, lightly for the most part, some heavier bursts left trace or dustings of accumulations. During real light showers it would mix with rain, temperatures hovered just above freezing. Snow event still on going from yesterday.

More snow!

2009-02-09T20:12:00.000-08:00

This morning woke up to find almost 2 inches of snow on the ground. Most of it melted through out the day. Tonight it has started snowing heavily and we have another good trace to almost an inch on the ground right now. National Weather Service of Seattle isn't predicting much more to fall out of this convergance zone. A new front off the coast is going to bring more snow, but turn over to rain tomorrow before much accumulates, so the prediction goes... Will report again tomorrow.

2009-01-27: Tuesday's snow fall a dud.

2009-01-29T17:33:00.000-08:00

Tuesday morning's snow was light, and about a dusting, to maybe a trace accumulated before the snow stopped falling. Later in the afternoon light drizzle or rain showers were throughout the area, nothing to exciting and no pictures this time, but note worthy none the less.

snow update...

2009-01-25T23:00:00.000-08:00

Well the snow stopped and the sky's cleared around 7:30-8pm. No additional accumulation. About a trace is present on grass and other cooler surfaces. The streets in most spots are clear, but beginning to freeze with our cold temperatures now. Tuesday is my next anticipated day of a snow event. I might even have pictures.

still snowing...

2009-01-25T16:19:00.000-08:00

Well it's been snowing lightly all day today. No additional accumulation, still a trace on the ground, in spots. National weather service calls for light snow until about after midnight.

Snowing...

2009-01-24T23:00:00.000-08:00

I know the rain gauge isn't recording any measurements, but that is because it is currently snowing, and sticking. The rain gauge is not heated and therefore does not record any frozen precipitation until it melts.

About a dusting of accumulation on the ground right now. Only light flurrys were expected. I will post an update when this snow event is over.

Server crash

2009-01-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

I had a little glitch with the server this evening about 7pm. As I was finishing up another round of hardware upgrades that needed to be done (case was overheating due to failed fans.) Somehow managed to get an intermittent power connection to one of the CD drives. This caused the machine to lock up. When I rebooted, the last 24 hours of the graph and data was lost. Far as I can tell all previous data is still intact. I'm going to look into possibly a method of backup and restore of this particular data so in the future a system crash does not result in loss of daily data.

Outage - Maintainance

2009-01-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

The weather server will be offline starting at 6:40pm tonight (offline as I write this) as I do some upgrades. It is on a backup battery now and changing computer configurations so that when power goes out, it stays running, and if battery runs out, it will auto start and run with the return of A/C power. Doing some tests in regard so I know it works in the event of a power outage. Should be back up and running around 7:30-7:45pm tonight.

The white stuff continues

2009-01-02T19:05:00.000-08:00

I've slacked off and can't give much in the way of details. But not all of the snow from the December storms has melted off yet.
Around here there is still the plowed snow piles in existance and trace amounts on lawns and on the sides of roads. 2-3 inches of "wet snow" is expected to fall overnight tonight in the Puget Sound region.
Went up to Gold Bar today, they had a fresh 2 inches of snow on the ground from this morning. Snow up there is still over a foot deep, everywhere. Roads are plowed however and only slush and ice appears to be on the roads. Hwy2 is clear all the way to Big Bend.

Seattle has had some thawing over the past few days. We went to all Rain on December 26th, but sense it has been off and on snow mixed in with rain, or snow, or rain. Temperatures keep hovering in the mid 30's. Stay tuned. I've uploaded pictures in the gallery.

Power outage.

2008-12-23T05:40:00.000-08:00

This morning the neighborhood experienced a power outage starting about 2:15am. City light only had one crew on the night shift and they were currently dealing with a bigger power outage in Lake Forest Park. The power outage was due to a very large tree limb falling and detaching the primary feeder from the insulator and it landed on the transformer shorting it out. This was about 3 houses east from the weather station.

Power was restored around 5:15am. I booted the server and everything is back online now. Any data between 2:15am and 5:15am was lost.

Weather update.

2008-12-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

Well it snowed most of the day Sunday. Here in Edmonds it was freezing rain briefly in the morning. At the weather station it stayed snow all morning and day. Total snow accumulation on the ground here in Edmonds is now 9 inches. Depth seems to vary a lot locally from neighborhood to street corners. Another storm is expected Tuesday night with daytime highs all week barely breaking 32 degrees, some thawing will be likely but I doubt enough to clear things up.

Here is a picture I took last night about 11:30pm of the I-5 Foot bridge over pass at NE 195th St. in Shoreline.

More can be found in the gallery.

Snow events log thus far...

2008-12-20T18:39:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 12/17/2008: South sound and north sound (north of Everett) Got the majority of the snow. In the evening a band of showers moved south and dumped about an inch of snow across Edmonds and Shoreline.
Thursday 12/18/2008: Convergence zone developed over Downtown Seattle stretching through the east side. Those areas got the bulk of it, but it snowed lightly from Shoreline through Everett. Nothing more than a dusting for accumulation Between Shoreline and Everett.
Friday 12/19/2008: Mostly cloudy and cold. The high was about 27 degrees F.
Saturday 12/20/2008: So far, cloudy through out the day, low of 13.3 degrees F. High of 23.9 degrees F. Snow started falling about 3:15pm. It is expected to continue through out the night with 5-12 inches of snow by morning. Currently moderate snow and 22.1 degrees F. Stay warm, I'll post another update tomorrow.

Another cold morning.

2008-12-16T18:04:00.000-08:00

We had another cold morning this morning.
My Shoreline station recorded 17.1ºF for a low around 7am.
My wireless radio shack thermometer at my apartment in Edmonds recorded a low of 19.2ºF.

National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm watch.
Between Shoreline and Marysville we are expecting a total possible accumulation of 7-8 inches it looks like. Currently there is a trace amount on sidewalks and lawns left over from the weekend's storm. Still a lot of icy roads around Shoreline, Edmonds and Everett. Drive careful!

Lowest temp in years

2008-12-15T00:41:00.000-08:00

I've already broken the lowest temperature sense the Weather station has been recording. It has been online sense October 2007. So far the low is 20.5ºF. I suspect we'll see 17-15 degrees for a low this morning. We'll see, goodnight and stay warm!

Outage today

2008-12-12T17:23:00.000-08:00

Shortly after 1pm today the weather server lost power breifly, as it is not yet on a backup battery it had to wait until I got off work to get powered back up at 4:30pm. Unfortunatly all data, wind speeds, rain, etc during that time frame was not recorded.

First Lowland Snow in forcast

2008-12-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

Looks like our first chance at Puget Sound lowland snow is in the forecast. Currently they're saying Rain will start changing over to snow on the higher hills Friday night the 12th. Snow Saturday and snow showers saturday night with sunny but very cold temperatures on Sunday, highs in the upper 20's. Lows in the low 20's. I'm excited!

Random updates

2008-11-08T18:37:00.001-08:00

Recently I've been doing a few random updates here and there that I haven't mentioned yet. First of all, the weather station details are all programmed and updated for it's new location as of late September. The rain gauge was not working properly until the beginning of November. I misplaced the debris screen for it so pine neadles kept jamming the tipping bucket, resulting in no measured precipitation during a rain fall. That is all fixed now. During the power outage on November 4th, power went out at 3:30am and as a result, the station was not recording any data from 3:30am until about 1:30pm. It had been raining that morning during that time, so actual precipitation so far is about a quarter inch of rain less than actual. Maybe less, I'm not sure how much it rained, as I was asleep during that time. Sense then a backup UPS has been installed on the server therefore in the event of a power outage, even if network connectivity is gone, it will still record all data and upload it once power is restored. Right now however there's still a slight chance of data loss due to the size of the battery currently used. It will only run the station for about half an hour. As for most people right now, money is a problem so I am limited with what I have. I am thinking about adding a Car battery to the backup supply which should be able to power the station for a good 12+ hours if needed. I will post an update on anything regarding that when it happens.

Other visual changes may be occuring as I do some slight re-organizations for this website and the station it's self to make things more user friendly.

Ronald Bog Blog finds me.

2008-11-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

It is very exciting for me to find that my weather station after only being back online at it's new location for about 2 months now has already been found by others. You can view the Ronald Bog Blog at http://ronaldbog.blogspot.com

The direct blog post can be viewed at http://ronaldbog.blogspot.com/2008/10/carls-shoreline-weather-station.html

I'm looking at doing some possible remodeling of the page for my weather server, possibly making it's very own web page separate from my personal page. I'm open to all suggestions!

Power outage

2008-11-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

The weather server suffered a power outage shortly after 3:30am this morning. It will be back online in about 30 minutes. When I have the extra cash I will look into getting a backup battery for it.

Weather Station is back online!

2008-09-29T01:06:00.000-07:00

The weather station is back online, at a new location. It is now at the very northern central area of Shoreline, Wa. (North of Seattle.) Located in a neighborhood known as North Ridge. Elevation is 373ft according to Google Earth. I haven't had time yet to update the webpage details right now, but it is online and updating every 5 minutes.

The Weather station is moving!

2008-06-21T02:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I ran into some trouble with today's gas prices. I wasn't able to afford the commute anymore from Gold Bar to Everett. So I had to re-locate as a result. The weather server will no longer run and record data from Big Bend, in Gold Bar for I am unable to pay the rent out there and internet access, on top of living in a place near Everett. So, I have moved, and the weather station will be re-installed and operating sometime next month in the North Ridge neighborhood of Shoreline, Washington. Check back for more details.

Downtime from 5-25-2008 to now...

2008-05-31T01:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the weather server being down sense 5-25-2008 at 6:55pm. I just noticed it wasn't updating today. The server had been re-booted, probably due to a power outage or power surge. Anyway I logged back on, started up the server, did some updates and everything should be running again pending no more power issues. For now the graph will be blank as it is drawing a new one for the next few hours.