News items for tag weather - Koos van den Hout

Het waait stevig.. let ook op de windvlaggetjes op weather.idefix.net Nederland 2010-08-23 14:00 .. vooral de waarnemingen over zee hebben tot 9 Beaufort! Waarnemingsposten EHKV en EHQE.
Update: Op 15:00 nog meer harde wind, windkracht 10 op EHKV weather.idefix.net Nederland 2010-08-23 15:00.

EHKV = oil platform K14-fa-1c in the Northsea.

I've done some work on the weather map site. I'm improving the plotting script to have a better abstraction of data and plotting so I can do plots for multiple countries.

As a first I'm plotting Denmark. The reasons are simple: it's a not too big country and has a reasonable number of weather stations.

Weather maps Denmark.

Now to see if that gives visitors :)

A night with a heavy thunderstorm and high numbers of lightning strikes detected. No local damage, we just saw hailstones come down, break up and the parts still fly around for over a meter. So we were glad we weren't outside at that time.

No this is not the result of an artillery attack on a swimming pool, this was the weather in Oklahoma city on 16 May 2010. Source: Monster hail storm slams Oklahoma city - TornadoVideos.Net

En de goede vulling van het afgelopen weekend was... het jaarlijkse paastreffen van de ligfietsvereniging nvhpv op de camping Harskamperdennen.

• Vrijdag erheen gefietst, bij Vechten afgesproken met wat andere ligfietsers uit Zuid-Holland. Daar moest ik nog even mobiel Internet gebruiken om mezelf op te geven voor de xs4all IPv6 proef. Daarna via een leuke route richting Harskamp, daar de tent opgezet en 's avonds gegeten bij de chinees in Harskamp.
• Zaterdag ben ik er zelf op uitgegaan met de wardriving box achterop de fiets richting Wolfheze, Heelsum, Renkum, Bennekom en terug via Ede. Dat leverde maar liefst 4684 nieuwe netwerken op. Ik ben onderweg wel natgeregend, heb zelfs in Wolfheze een potje staan schuilen. Toen ik terugkwam was het ligfiets-ringsteken al geweest (had ik graag bij gefotografeerd, maargoed). Wel werd er nog een stunt uitgehaald met wat mooi versierde ligfietsen die ik wel op de gevoelige CCD kreeg.
• Zondag zou de georganiseerde toertocht zijn maar het weer was prutje en de toertocht werd afgelast. Toch zijn Mirjam en ik een stukje gaan fietsen door de bossen. Waar alles nat en modderig was, dus ik had een vieze fiets.
• Maandag terug liep eerst mijn ketting er af, toen schoot de kettingbuis weer los en bleef de ketting 'lastig' doen. Later in de rit brak zelfs mijn ketting. Gelukkig was er iemand met een kettingpons in de groep die de ketting gerepareerd heeft (schakels ertussenuit) waardoor de ketting ook minder slecht liep. Bij thuiskomst maar gelijk de fietsen uitgebreid schoongespoten en de kettingen gesmeerd. Toch ben ik denk ik toe aan een nieuwe ketting en tandwielen. En een kettingponsje is denk ik wel een goeie uitbreiding van de onderhoudsspullen bij mijn ligfiets.

De foto's die ik gemaakt heb: Paastreffen 2010 - Foto's Koos van den Hout
Alle hulde voor de organisatoren die er weer een prima evenement van gemaakt hebben!

Interesting weather this morning: snow started between 7 and 8, and it was nearly melted away again before 11. Overview on webcam.idefix.net Uithof archive Monday 8 March 2010.

Some actors are annoyed by being typecast in the same roles constantly, but some cities can be typecasted too: I watched WarGames (1983) yesterday and noted in a number of shots of Seattle it was raining. Now I'm watching Firewall (2006) and I think I haven't seen an outdoor scene yet without rain.
I visited Seattle myself and it's not that bad.

Anybody know any leads in receiving data from a weather station which uses "instant transmission" on 868 MHz? I'd like to receive data from such a weather station. In linux, on the server. Some device which would receive the data and present it via a serial port would be great.
Update: the wonderful thing about standards.. I learned that there is no standard for data from weather stations on 868 MHz and that a sensor from brand A will not be received by a receiver from brand B. Time to be more specific: the weather station is a TFA-Dostmann "Stratos". I already e-mailed a technical contact at TFA-Dostmann about this.
Update 2010-01-14: Answer from TFA-Dostmann: it is impossible to receive the data from that weather station on a computer.

The Netherlands, Vlieland with less snow
Image credit: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

More satellite image browsing: the Modis rapid response system image gallery offers a lot. Nice detail in the latest images showing the Netherlands such as the Aqua/Modis pass at 2010-01-08 12:45 UTC: Vlieland has a lot less snow!.

Image credit: NERC Satellite Receiving Station, Dundee University, Scotland

Interesting snow cover in the Netherlands, with more coming up. This satellite image from this morning shows a serious white cover and some clouds. The big rivers are visible as darker lines and the ice growth on parts of the IJsselmeer shows.

The well monitored heating system worked a lot better during the night, so the problems are fixed. Only the heater pump ran a few times which I think is part of the frost-protection. The isolation in our house is good: the living room temperature only dropped from 19⁰C to 16.8⁰C over the whole night while it was below 0⁰C outside.

Hot water system fixed: the 3-way valve controlling how the heating/boiler system heats water was broken due to calcium buildup. Now replaced and suddenly things work as expected again.

A day with temperatures staying below 0 ⁰C and the first working day is not the right day to call the heating company about a hot water problem. They sounded very very busy on the phone

More scientific research into the problems with the heater show that the sensor detecting hot water being used seems to be malfunctioning: the system starts for hot water use about every 5 minutes even when not a drop of water is used in the house. Time to call for a repair. I hope the company which does repairs to heating installations isn't too busy with problems due to the current temperatures, those are well below freezing at the moment.

Snow this morning

Snow! And the associated traffic mess in the Netherlands.

We hung up a bird-feeder in the backyard last weekend and it is now very popular since it got cold the last few days, making for a few nice pictures this morning. They look a lot better at full size.

Sparrow in the backyard

Sparrow in the backyard

Beetje verstoring in de onweers sensor thuis, er was helemaal geen onweer volgens andere bronnen. Vermoedelijk een gevolg van de sloopwerkzaamheden van maandag.

Het is een regenachtige dag vandaag, maar de neerslagradar van het KNMI heeft momenteel geen data, en buienradar.nl is maar naar de backup-methode overgeschakeld, zo te zien duitse radar. Op de webcam zijn de buien te zien die voorbij trekken.

The lightning detector had another active night.. and this time I slept right through it. Nothing like the high numbers on 26 May 2009 but still a peak.

When I bought some 1-wire sensors a while ago at Hobby boards I included the lightning detector in the order. I installed it indoors in the attic where it also counts the switch of the fluorescent lights, so it will probably work better in an outdoor weather station further away from interference. But, in the early hours of today there was a heavy thunderstorm over this country and it counted like crazy. The stated sensitivity is about 80 kilometers:

this lightning detector will be able to pick up lightning more than 50 miles away

With the 75000 lightning strikes reported in the Netherlands for that night, the numbers don't look that strange.