Weather Station Additions
As follow up to my post about the new home here at A Simple Life of Luxury for the Borth & Ynyslas Weather Station, I have a few updates. Having set up the new system I’ve continued to tweak it and now have some new additions to share with you.
A Weather Widget
First of these is a Weather Widget that you should be able to see in the right hand column on all pages of this site. (For those on smaller mobile devices it might be below this post rather than to the right of it). There is also an image of it to the right! Talk about widget overload!
The widget shows some basic live weather data from Borth & Ynyslas. It only show the basics as I don’t want to give too much away for free – I do afterall want to encourage people to subscribe for the full content but hopefully it’ll act as a teaser for some. It shows the current
- Temperature
- Pressure
- Windspeed and Direction
- Rainfall for the day
Buy me a Coffee (please!)
Now, I realise that for some the data in this widget will be all the information they want or need. Afterall, not everyone is a ‘weather geek’ like me. Not everyone wants to know what the maximum and minimums were or wants to be able to look back through data from any day that they choose. I am of course hoping that some will want to do such things, but for those that don’t and would still like to support the weather station I have also added a ‘buy me a coffee‘ link where they can donate to help keep it running. So, if you use this widget and want to support it then please buy me a coffee!
Current Conditions
I also noticed that I had failed to add the ‘current conditions’ tags from the weather station to the main ‘Overview Page’. It wasn’t a huge deal as this is only a textual representation of the conditions as they are interpreted by the weather station but I have now added them anyway. Whilst doing so I also added any notices produced by the weather station to this section of the page. These additions can now be seen along with the forecast information.
Forecasting vs Recording
Talking of the forecast, I should point out that this isn’t really the point of the weather station. Such a forecast is only based on the data points from this single location. It can’t therefore compete with the millions of data points that forecasts from the Met Office are based on. They have numerous weather stations, satellites, weather balloons, aeroplanes and all manner of recording devices. I might have a professional quality, very expensive weather station but I can’t compete with that. Nor can the simple algorithm in the Weather Station compete with the massive models used by the Met Office, let alone the super-computers that they run on. The forecast reported here is unlikely to be as good as that from the Met Office models, but as I say that’s not the objective.
The Weather Station here is more about reporting and recording what is happening and has happened rather than forecasting what will happen. Borth, and Ynyslas in particular has it’s own little micro-climate. What’s happening and has happened here isn’t always the same as what happens elsewhere so it’s interesting to be able to see that.
The wind, is a case in point. The katabatic wind that funnels down the estuary being the most obvious of these micro-climate phenomena.
At any time of the year, if a NE or E wind is forecast then you can pretty much guarantee that it will be windier in Ynyslas than the Met Office forecast suggests. However, at certain times of the year the differences can be startling. In late Spring and early Summer especially it can go mad here. So much so that the wind that blows down the valley is ‘affectionately’ known by some as ‘Ivor’. At these times of years, and others if the conditions are right things can be quite spectacular.
The forecast from the Met office might only be for 10 knot winds but over the course of the morning it’s likely to accelerate here to at least 25-30 knots and often much more than that. If the forecast is for 20 knots then 40-50 knots is likely here. This effect is however very localised. Elsewhere the Met Office will be correct, but here things will be different. Being able to see and record such phenomena here in our own micro-climate is what it’s all about.
Tide Times
I’ve also added a new Tide Times page just for information. It only shows the tide times for the next few days but I thought it would be nice to have them there so they are now available in the Tide Times page.
Maximum Rain Rate Time
I also noticed that although I have always shown the current rate of rain and the maximum rain rate for the day I have never shown what time the maximum rain rate occurred. I’ve fixed that with the addition of the ‘Maximum Rain Rate Time’ parameter which will be displayed on the Rainfall page. Typically, there hasn’t been any rain at all today so I can’t show you it in a screenshot but it’ll appear here if there has been some rain!
Future Updates
I’d quite like to add some more data to the site and also some reporting of trends. Now that I have 15 years worth of weather data from this location it might be nice to see how the years compare and how things are changing. The trouble is, I would need to update the software that runs the station and whilst that shouldn’t be a huge deal, nothing is ever simple. The fact that it is been up and running for 15 years means that the software is now quite old and any update would be a major one. I’ll probably experiment with some updates at some point but I’m also a firm believer of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. With this in mind I just know that fiddling with such things will only cause problems. I want to be 100% sure that I won’t lose any data and that I’ll be able to keep things running before I start making too many changes.
As always though, if you spot anything that isn’t as it should be then let me know, and ‘enjoy the weather‘.
