Ofallon/ St Peters Weather Blog
Contact: tstolze@gmail.com
10/02/2009
Alright, so I have moved things forward a bit quicker than I thought.
I am really liking the Wordpress Blog!
A real blog, now users can leave comments! Of course I will have to approve them, so be nice! :)
I will link this "blog" from the new location, it should be listed as archive blog.
New Location:
10/01/2009
September summaries have been updated for both sites.
I am trying a new blog, I will likely make the full switch by then first of the year. http://ofallonweather.org/wp/
I would like to take the old post and add them to an archive within the new setup.
I am also trying new real time software, it requires the end-user to have Microsoft Silverlight installed, the current real time required Flash. http://tstolze.net/test/
All data for the new real time is within my site, instead of using WeatherUnderground servers, please send feedback either way, thanks!
09/01/2009
August summary uploaded, things seem to be stable, no big storms or heat waves.
As noted my new roof was completed about 2 weeks ago, my roofer really helped out
and worked around the station, I didn't even have to take it down.
Stats for August: 583 unique visitors, 1323 visits, and 9657 pages served. Bandwidth was crazy, over 6 gigs.
That is what I get for sharing some High Definition video of my sons marching band.
Computers for both stations are operating great! Re-boots only done on updates.
08/02/2009
July summaries uploaded for both stations.
Friday I received our new camcorder, it is a High Definition Canon HF S100.
We should be able to capture some awesome HD videos.
The Ofallon station may be down for a day or two as we will be having a new roof installed shortly.
I will post the date(s) on the homepage when this occurs.
Chasing currently is only possible on Sundays, work is currently 6 days a week.
6/28/2009
Thought I would post an update due to the quiet nature of the weather, other than the heat.
Both stations recorded 90+ degree highs for 10 of the last 11 days.
The Ofallon station recorded a 39 mph wind gust last night from the diminishing storms.
Much higher wind gust occurred in the Troy, Winfield, and Golden Eagle areas.
Radar estimates were in the 60-80 mph range, very dangerous winds.
After a decent first storm chase, things have been put on hold.
Most due to timing of severe weather, weekends are best for me.
I do have time off, but due to cutbacks, I feel it is not necessary to put the extra burden on my co-workers.
We will continue to watch for severe weather during weekends for chasing.
After the first chase, I felt it necessary to purchase a Wilson cell phone amplifier.
This appears to be a quality product, I have done some local testing with impressive results.
All stations and computers currently seem to be performing extremely well.
6/01/2009
Updated archive data for both stations for the month of May.
My son and I are setup to do some storm chasing now.
The only thing we are currently missing is the ability to stream live video while driving.
I am researching this, if not this year, we will have this next year.
I believe I am lacking 2 things, a camera and a server to stream live video.
Both are well within the current budget.
Visitor Statistics for May 2009
1330 unique visitors, 52,399 hits, 215 MB of data transferred.
Thanks for spreading the word!
5/23/09
I guess no updates can be a good thing!
Everything is operating smoothly, St. Peters weather's PC has been up for 33 days without a reboot.
I found the issue causing software locks on the O'fallon weather PC.
Seems my backup software was taking control of the database file for a short time.
This would cause the weather software to lock until the database access error was manually cleared.
On 5/13 I was able to meet Reed Timmer from the Discovery Channel Series Storm Chasers
The team stopped in Wentzville around noon to wait on storm development.
If they are in the area, track them down, the whole team was extremely nice!
They took a direct hit from the tornado in Kirksville that same day.
They were able to film along with gathering radar data from this tornado.
Reed's website can be seen here: Tornado Videos
Look for more storm pictures in the photo gallery as my son and I look to start chasing
storms late spring and summer!
.
All I had was my cell phone!
4/17/2009
St. Peters weather will be getting a Uverse on 4/18.
Conditions may not update for several hours during the install.
The O'fallon Weather rain gauge is finally calibrated!
This has been a bit frustrating for me, first low then high.
The St. Peters Weather rain gauge was calibrated before installation.
Both were calibrated with a 4 inch gauge that can be seen here: Rain Gauge
I highly recommend this as an affordable and accurate manual gauge.
Remember rain amount can vary dramatically over short distances.
I added some more information to the mobile weather pages for both stations.
A small radar image is also available and is linked in the mobile pages.
04/07/09
Station 2 is now live!
Again it can be seen at http://stpetersweather.org/
This station is located just east of Jungermann, off of West Drive.
History and Archive will fill in as time goes by.
My hopes are to have 2-3 web cams live by the end of the year.
I would still like to have another station further south in St. Charles County.
This takes a decent investment, the station with logger and software is ~$400-$500.
Then it needs a host with a reliable internet connection and I will provide a dedicated computer.
Of course the host has to put up with me! :)
04/05/09
The old station has been installed at the St. Peters location. Due to a lack of
communication within ATT the new host has no internet service. He had to have
his old service removed 1-2 days before a Uverse install, this happened, but it
seems the system doesn't know it. ATT cancelled his appointment without contacting him!
So his install is delayed till late this month or early next month.
He should have some sort of internet on 4/7, although not with ATT, the
earliest they could get his old DSL back on is 4/10.
The address for the new station is http://stpetersweather.org/
The Ofallon station can be reached at a new name http://ofallonweather.org/
03/29/2009
If the weather permits, we should be installing the old station on 4/4!
Again this will be in St. Peters, MO.
I have many of the web pages setup already, pages like the forecast and radar will
use the page from the Ofallon weather site. The St. Peters station will have its own domain,
although it will be served from this same account.
Speaking of domains, tstolze.net will be changing its name, look for the name change in the next
couple of weeks. This will be a first for me, I have been considering a more
appropriate domain name for some time. The old name will continue to work.
This will be done through a redirection, I have the domain paid through 3/2010.
After that I will most likely let it expire.
03/12/2009
Added a mobile page, currently it only displays temperature, wind and rain.
If you would like additional data available please contact me.
Let me know if you have any issues displaying the Mobile Page,
this is something new and I am trying to keep it simple.
03/01/2009
Stats for February
622 Unique visitors, 22457 pages served, 41289 hits, 212 MB of data.
February weather summary uploaded, and can be viewed here.
Still waiting on time and weather for installation of the old station in St. Peters.
I am still tweaking the readings on the new station.
The last rain was .36" read by my manual gauge, the station recorded .38".
Just a couple more decent rains and I should have it calibrated.
Temperatures are close, just a couple of tenths on the cool side.
Barometer is currently reading .4 millibar high, I look to correct both issues after a weeks more data.
02/02/2009
Stats for January
600 Unique visitors, 24655 pages served, 61318 hits, 231 MB of data.
I appreciate everyone who visits the site, I would appreciate everyone spreading word of the site,
especially those local. Thanks!
Weather has pushed back the installation of the old station in St. Peters, hopefully within the next few weeks!
Updated with January summary, I will try to fill in the blanks from the beginning of the month.
This was caused by starting a new database along with the addition of the new station.
I had issues with my hosting provider earlier this week,
I am keeping an eye on it as I don't want the site to become unreliable.
I was unable to ftp full updates to the site from around 7 am until 4 pm, I believe it was on 1/28.
1/25/2009
Snow and Ice forecast images have been added. Snow and Ice
The images are from
the St. Louis National Weather Service Office.
1/22/2009
Cold Temps
I recorded below zero temperatures for the first time since having a station.
-2.3 and -1.8 were recorded on consecutive nights earlier this month.
This can be viewed here: Current Month
Software
I have purchased new software to launch and monitor my weather programs.
It should catch any "lock ups" of software, it will then close and start the effected software.
I also have automated the radar software to upload automatically upon startup.
This used to have to be done manually, and was missed on many re-boots.
A quick list of software I use:
Radar: GRLevel 3
Webpage updates: Weatherlink
Weather Underground Updates: VWS
Internal Data Sharing: Virtual VP
Start up and program monitoring: Start Watch
Radar Data provided by: Allisonhouse
1/11/2009
New station installed today! :)
The history graphs will take time to populate, I archived the old database and started
a new one.
Reception seen here should be at 100% all the time now, no more dropouts, which means no missed readings.
I will be analyzing the readings, temps look good, pressure appears to be .5-1 millibar high.
I will monitor for a day or two then make adjustments.
I am hoping for the old station to be back in operation around 2/1.
This will depend on the weather and time available to myself and the new host.
1/06/2008
New wired Davis Vantage Pro2 ordered.
I continue to have problems with wireless interference, this has been ongoing since October.
The dropouts in reception can be seen here
I believe I have a location in the St. Peters area for my old station.
If this goes through, I will have 2 stations on the site in St. Charles County.
This location is about 1.2 miles south of highway 70, about 9-10 miles from my location.
1/1/2008
I am trying to add more information to the site at this time without currently spending a lot of money or time.
I will plan on updating this if something of significance is occurring.
This may be related to the weather, site, or a problem with the station.
2008 Ofallon Weather Facts
This is a quick summary of my recordings for the year of 2008.
High/Low temperature: 96.3° July 20, 1.8° Dec 22
16 Days over 90°, 29 days with a high below 32°, 105 days with a low below 32°.
I recorded 54.83" of rain, most rain in a month was 11.39" in May, highest day total was 3.44 " on Sept. 14.
115 days recorded the minimum of .01" of rain, 73 over .10" and 15 days with over 1".
The wind average was 2.7 mph for the year.
Highest gust recorded for 2008 was 43 mph, this occurred on several days.
You can always view my Archive page to view this information.
Future Plans
My future plans are to add additional stations to the site, maybe just in Ofallon, or possibly across the St. Louis area.
I would like to start adding cameras to the site, so we can check weather conditions across the area.
