After the rainfall from yesterday and early this morning (1.10 inches), the annual precipitation is now at a surplus of 0.17 inches. Monthly precipitation has been below normal for January, February, March and April. May is not quite over, but the rainfall for the month is 1.74 inches above normal.
The outlook for the summer months of June, July and August indicates equal chances for a near normal amount of precipitation.
Meteorology
NYT Says We’re Too Dumb To Understand Climate Change
By Robert Tracinski I recently wrote about the wretched reporting on the claim that 2016 was the “hottest year on record,” using as my main example a New York Times article by Justin Gillis that gave his readers none of the relevant numbers they could use to evaluate that claim. None of them. If you…
Yes, where are the error bars?!
Photo Selected for weloveweather.tv
Pyranometer Data Online
As of this evening, the pyranometer data is now online. Here is the link to The Weather Underground site. The site ID is KPAPORTM11.
First Day of Pyranometer Operation
In a previous post, I talked about installing a new pyranometer to my weather station. Below is a graph of today’s solar radiation flux in W/m^2.
The graph clearly shows when the instrument was in shade (7:30 – 9:30 AM EST). Maximum value was after noon due to the fact that the longitude is about 3 deg west of the 75th meridian and because the equation of time for today is 3 minutes. The maximum solar elevation angle was about 28 deg. The optical depth of the atmosphere is significantly higher at such a low angle than if the sun was at zenith.
2016 Climatological Summary
2016 ANNUAL CLIMATOLOGICAL SUMMARY
CITY: Stormstown STATE: PA
ELEV: 1385 ft LAT: 40.8 LONG: 77.87
TEMPERATURE (°F), HEAT BASE 65.0, COOL BASE 65.0
DEP. HEAT COOL
MEAN MEAN FROM DEG DEG MAX MAX MIN
YR MO MAX MIN MEAN NORM DAYS DAYS HI DATE LOW DATE >=90 <=32 <=32
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16 1 34.3 17.3 25.9 1.3 1211 0 59.4 31 5.0 5 0 12 30
16 2 40.0 23.1 31.9 5.1 960 0 65.9 28 0.5 12 0 7 22
16 3 56.6 33.6 45.3 8.8 618 8 76.2 9 16.0 3 0 0 14
16 4 59.6 35.7 48.4 0.7 522 23 80.9 18 19.3 6 0 0 10
16 5 68.8 48.4 58.5 -0.1 273 71 88.6 28 36.6 19 0 0 0
16 6 79.1 56.5 68.2 0.9 70 166 87.7 11 43.2 10 0 0 0
16 7 86.2 62.0 73.6 2.4 28 295 95.7 25 49.6 3 9 0 0
16 8 85.3 62.7 73.2 3.6 24 278 92.7 12 50.8 23 3 0 0
16 9 76.9 53.9 65.1 2.9 127 131 89.0 10 39.8 25 0 0 0
16 10 63.9 43.4 53.2 2.1 388 22 79.6 18 28.4 26 0 0 3
16 11 54.1 34.3 43.9 3.1 636 2 73.6 2 23.2 23 0 0 13
16 12 37.6 24.6 31.2 1.4 1047 0 52.1 27 5.9 16 0 7 24
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
61.9 41.4 51.6 2.7 5905 997 95.7 JUL 0.5 FEB 12 26 116
PRECIPITATION (in)
DEP. MAX DAYS OF RAIN
FROM OBS. OVER
YR MO TOTAL NORM DAY DATE .01 .1 1
---------------------------------------------
16 1 1.58 -0.92 1.12 10 7 2 1
16 2 2.99 0.29 1.23 3 9 3 1
16 3 1.92 -1.38 0.55 13 10 6 0
16 4 1.85 -1.15 0.50 28 12 5 0
16 5 3.52 -0.28 0.73 21 17 10 0
16 6 2.12 -2.08 0.60 5 11 8 0
16 7 1.16 -2.64 0.26 30 8 7 0
16 8 5.61 2.31 3.47 10 11 8 1
16 9 3.49 0.09 1.41 29 10 7 1
16 10 6.95 4.05 3.62 20 13 7 2
16 11 1.22 -2.18 0.62 30 5 3 0
16 12 2.07 -0.73 0.76 18 12 4 0
---------------------------------------------
34.48 -4.62 3.62 OCT 125 70 6
WIND SPEED (mph)
DOM
YR MO AVG. HI DATE DIR
---------------------------------
16 1 4.7 42.0 10 W
16 2 4.5 38.0 25 SW
16 3 4.1 54.0 28 SE
16 4 4.0 43.0 3 NW
16 5 2.7 34.0 8 SW
16 6 2.9 34.0 12 SW
16 7 2.5 26.0 15 SW
16 8 2.2 35.0 16 S
16 9 2.1 24.0 8 NE
16 10 2.9 49.0 20 WNW
16 11 3.9 41.0 20 W
16 12 5.4 34.0 12 W
---------------------------------
3.5 54.0 MAR W
Pyranometer
Today, I installed a new weather instrument, for 2017 and beyond, to my personal weather station (PWS). I installed a pyranometer to measure the solar radiation flux density (W/m**2). The data from the instrument will be sampled every 30 minutes, along with the other parameters that are already being logged.
I have been told that the State College region is cloudier than most. Now I can measure just how “gray” the environment is here.
Indian Summer
Some would say that our area is now in the midst of Indian Summer (is that politically correct?). Yesterday morning, the temperature in Stormstown fell just below 32 deg F (31.6 F at 6:00 AM EDT), the first recorded freezing temperature of the season. There was frost on the lawns as seen below:
As the sun rose, the frost that was in full sunlight dissipated, while the frost in shadow remained.
The foliage has some color. However, it is not expected to be spectacular this year as the region has suffered a drought over the summer.
It is definitely jacket weather here, nonetheless.
Tropical Storm Matthew
Tropical Storm Matthew formed today. It is forecast to become a hurricane this Friday.
What is unusual is that the forecast track has the system making a hard right turn to the north sometime this weekend. Most of the models are in agreement to that forecast.
However, the two main models, GFS and ECMWF, disagree on where it will track a week from now. An earlier run of the GFS had it going up Chesapeake Bay next Thursday. The ECMWF has it moving slower with a possible landfall in southern Florida, so this should be watched carefully in the coming days.
BloomSky Weather Station
Over the weekend, I installed a BloomSky weather station at my home in Stormstown. The installation was simple. The only tool required was a Phillips screwdriver.
First, the mount was simply clamped to the backyard fence. Then a mounting plate for the solar panel was screwed onto the mount. The solar panel simply clipped to the plate. Before mounting the sensors, it had to be configured for the WiFi by using the iOS app. This was an easy process after plugging it in using the supplied AC adapter.
Lastly, the weather station itself only had to be dropped in place into the mount, and then plug in the solar panel. The only issue was the the air pressure didn’t report at first. This was resolved by unplugging the solar array and cycling the power from the internal battery. Then plug the solar array back in.
Data and camera imagery are located here:
https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KPAPORTM15#history
Stormstown Dispatch 