Dec 22, 2005 - We now have the capability to incorporate pictures of your weather station into the CWOP Station Info Page. Instructions on how to upload your digital images are here.
Dec 12, 2005 - Here's a graph of the number of weather stations, by type (CW position, Ham Position, Ham Positionless, Ham hexidecimal) since May 11, 2005. Note that the number of CW stations is growing at an annual rate of over 50%.
Dec 4, 2005 - A significant problem exists when a CWOP station gets stuck and sends repeating data that do not change. This can happen when communications are lost between the sensor(s), the weather station hardware, or the PC data logging application. Another cause of repeating relative humidity data is when the application sends humidity of 100 %, i.e. h00, when there is no humidity sensor present. Philip Gladstone has added a page that lists stations with repeating or stuck data to his suite of quality checking tools accessable through the Data Quality link above or through the Shortform link. If your station is on the WxStuck list or if you see that your data on findU is not changing, try these procedures: 1) restart the PC and data logging application; 2) Make sure the connection between the PC and weather console is OK; 3) Check to see that the weather console has power; 4) Check the connections between the weather console and the sensors. If you have a wireless system, check to see that the sensors have power, including a fresh batteries and distance between the sensor and the weather console supports solid communications. For Ham Radio stations, check to see that the connection between the weather console and the TNC is functional. If you have doubts about why your station appears on the "WxStuck" web page, please contact russ@cwop.net or dave@cwop.info.
Nov 22, 2005 - A 23 minute training video, prepared by Colorado State University, on the best way to take high-quality snow measurements is now available for download here.
Nov 20, 2005 - CWOP was invited to present results at a Royal Meteorological Society meeting in London. The RMetS presentation was prepared by Dave Helms (CW0351) and given by Royal Met Society member Tim West (CW0521) yesterday. A summary of the meeting is here (page 5).
Nov 19, 2005 - Here are three examples of CWOP Quality Checking graphical results being embedded into CWOP member web pages: Westminister, MA; Carter Lake, IA; and Jacksonville, FL.
Nov 10, 2005 - The details of a hazardous gas release near Boulder, CO are contained in this TV news report where the on-site reporter mentions "very light winds out of the south". Surface mesonet winds were available and note that the winds near the site agree with the on-site report of very light from the south while the nearest metar winds are 7 mph out of the north. Diffusion models using only the metar winds would have the hazardous plume spreading in the wrong direction and would have given the all clear signal too soon.
Nov 9, 2005 - CWOP data are being used, along with other data sets, by the Penn State Climatologist.
Nov 4, 2005 - The replacement router is up and working at the Yuma, AZ aprs server and the CWOP traffic is back to normal. Thanks to Dick for his diligent efforts getting the problem reported two days ago fixed.
Nov 2, 2005 - Received from Dick Stanich, KB7ZVA, the operator of the first server in the list under item # 2 here, "I lost my dsl router (up in smoke) this evening and it may not be until late friday before I get things up and running. My provider has to send it, as none are available in Yuma, Arizona. I'm banging this out on a very basic dial-up...Sorry!" Dick adds..."Remember 'stressed' spelled backwards is desserts. There is good in everything ;)"
Oct 23, 2005 - At long last, we are ready to sign-up volunteers to make snow measurements. We welcome volunteers from around the world and you can access sign-up information with links to sources of information on how to take accurate snow measurements. This is for sign-up only as the data entry software is not fully ready yet. Write your snow measurements down so you can enter them later.
Sept 29, 2005 - Regarding the Davis Weatherlink 5.6 software reporting wind gusts to CWOP/APRS. In order for Weatherlink to "code up" the wind gusts, the monitor or bulletin window must be opened and running in the background. If the program is just opened and not running either of these windows, just the average wind will be reported. This important point is not clear in the instructions.
Sept 27, 2005 - The findU primary server (www1.findu.com) has been installed in the new location and has been stable since 00 UTC Sept 24. Feel free to use it as much as you wish. The revised IP address is 66.37.46.6 and all of the URL's that were available before the move have been restored and work fine. During the move, the data to NOAA were passed through this backup URL.
Sept 21, 2005 - FindU's primary server is being pulled tonight for shipping to its new location. We will likely be on the backup server for the next 2 days. This will mean very poor access, as the backup server cannot even handle half the load. Continue to send your weather data to the aprs servers, but please limit your use of findU otherwise.
Sept 18, 2005 - Here's a neat way to look at the worldwide extent of CWOP. I used right click to zoom in and out.
Sept 16, 2005 - Rex Pirkle, K8CYJ, has added a twist (cyclonic) to the CWOP logo. Whether or not you see it may depend of the settings for your firewall. I see it with IE at work (no local firewall), but not with IE or Firefox at home where I do have a local firewall.
Sept 1, 2005 - Circumstances have dictated that the findU server be moved. A new location in Pittsburg has been secured and the server will be moving in the near future. There may be some outages and/or slow response as the older backup server tries to carry the full traffic load. During this time, new CW numbers can be obtained by sending an e-mail to the address at the bottom of this page.
Sept 1, 2005 - The Davis website now has the final release version of Weatherlink 5.6 available for download. A CWOP member reports that it works just fine. This version produces wind gust data. Be sure to configure to use the "NOAA" standard.
Aug 30, 2005 - As the warm days of summer draw to an end, we are working on a really cool capability. Hopefully, we will be able to acquire snow measurements taken by CWOP members and sent in via the web. An announcement that we are accepting volunteers for this snow data collection service will be made here sometime in September.
Aug 22, 2005 - In the July/August issue of Weatherwise, there is an article titled, "Helping Hands", by Joe Schmidt, CW0002. It describes how ham volunteers at the NOAA National Hurricane Center use the MADIS web site to gather data. It also mentions the record setting reports from CWOP stations CW0262 and K4ZZR during Hurricane Jeanne last year.
Aug 21, 2005 - Here is an item on CWOP from the Marquette, Michigan NWS Weather Forecast Office web site.
Aug 18, 2005 - Since January 1, 2005, there have been about 40 new persons entered into the CWOP database each week and during this same time, the number of stations sending data to CWOP and on to MADIS has been growing about 18 stations per week.
Aug 4, 2005 - When a web site appears on Slashdot, the resulting traffic is often so high the site becomes unavailable, a situation known as Slashdotting. Steve, K4HG, the developer of the server that all CWOP data goes through, wrote this Slashdot item on a new amateur radio satellite and here is his after action report of what happened and why CWOP data went down for awhile, but not for very long. While not weather-related, the downlinked data from this amateur satellite on the ISS is available.
July 27, 2005 - Travis Loller, a reporter for The Island Packet on Hilton Head Island, Bluffton, South Carolina has just published this article on CWOP and amateur weather stations.
July 20, 2005 - There is an item on CWOP on page 8 in the NWS Elko, Nevada Weather Forecast Office Spotter Newsletter.
July 15, 2005 - Mark Teel (CW4097) has added CWOP client support to his open source software wview which runs on Linux/BSD/unix/Darwin platforms and is developed to provide 24x7x365 reliability.The wview User Manual contains installation and configuration details.
July 3, 2005 - Google maps are now available on findu.com, also reachable by "Maps/Data displays" above right. Also, here shows several Expedia maps and the Google map below those. Replace the "kb0tvj" in the link with your callsign or CW number (CWxxxx). Center Google map by double clicking and use arrows to do fast panning. You can switch the view to see a satellite image of approximately the same area.
June 8, 2005 - An icon relating to CWOP has been added so that if you make a page on this web site a favorite, the Microsoft icon normally used will be replaced with a very small version of the CWOP logo.
June 1, 2005 - The number of CWOP stations reporting data to MADIS in a one hour period exceeded 2400 stations for the first time today. At one time there were 2404 stations reporting. CWOP is NOAA's largest real-time observing system thanks to our many data-contributing members.
May 28, 2005 - The WUHU add-on application, #15 in the table here, now supports the "base" versions of the Ambient VWS and WeatherView32 programs in addition to supporting LaCrosse hardware.
May 24, 2005 - A new feature has been added to the findu server. It is RSS which stands for Really Simple Syndication.
May 13, 2005 - Dave Heider (CW3501) has added CWOP support to his WeatherView32 program. There are upgrade instructions and other information for users of version 6 WeatherView32.
May 11, 2005 - Brad McConahay (N8QQ) has developed an APRS Variable Replacement Script to add APRS data to a web page.
May 10, 2005 - Mathias Kemper (CW3755) has developed a CWOP information page in German.
May 1, 2005 - Stan Horzepa (WA1LOU) has published a review of the Weather-Display program in the May issue of QST. This one page review is on page 54 of the journal, and is not available on-line.
April 8, 2005 - The traffic through MADIS from CWOP stations worldwide exceeded 2300 stations for the first time today.
March 17, 2005 - Today, St. Patrick's Day, we had the luck of the Irish and the number of CWOP stations reporting went above 2200 for the first time. At one point the CWOP traffic count was 2206 stations. There are currently 4899 member locations in the CWOP database.
March 10, 2005 - Some CWOP members have put together the Weather Station Siting, Performance, and Data Quality Guide. This is a beta release and we are asking for CWOP membership comment and feedback on ways that this 85 page document (2.2 Mbyte PDF) can be improved. We hope it will become a vehicle to further CWOP data improvement.
March 7, 2005 - The PC-Wetterstation/WSWin program now supports CWOP. This uses the VWSAPRS add-on to send the data from PC-Wetterstation to CWOP. More information is at CWOP info, in the table a few screens down where PC-Wetterstation is item # 8 in the alphabetical listing of programs supporting CWOP.
March 3, 2005 - A station's altitude and location are important to the data quality checking process and if these numbers are wrong, the quality checking will not work well. Here's the CWOP Altitude/Location Error Page that provides a way for members to check for possible problems with the altitude and location information used in the quality checking process. Also a log-log plot of registered station elevation vs. USGS elevation. The linear clustering a factor of about 3 below the diagonal is from stations where the operator entered elevation in feet rather than meters.
March 1, 2005 - The NWS Jacksonville Weather Forecast Office has a notice advertising CWOP on the JAX web page. It's about halfway down on the right side.
February 19, 2005 - Vanprod version 2.0.1 now has Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X support for CWOP. More information is at CWOP info, in the table a few screens down. Vanprod (written in perl) is item # 12 in the alphabetical listing of programs supporting CWOP.
February 11, 2005 - Many of the CWOP pressure measurements are not properly calibrated and show excessive error. This CWOP miscalibration report lists stations that could very easily improve the quality of their barometric pressure with a single adjustment.
February 2, 2005 - Feedback was reported from forecasters in the Huntsville, AL Weather Forecast Office (HUN) that they found the CWOP data of great use during the ice event this past weekend. They regularly consulted and used CWOP data with other data to issue statements.
January 2005 - If you live in the western United States, your data are now plotted on NWS maps that show Surface Observations for the western states. Similar maps are here. If your station is not in these areas, you may be able to view data graphs for your station by replacing C0351 with your 5 character NWS ID.
December 30, 2004 - CWOP is mentioned in an article and sidebar in the NY Times Technology Section. The article, "Hobbists Fill Out the Weather Map" is about personal weather station data used by the meteorological community. The sidebar, "Knowing More than Which Way the Wind Blows" is about different weather stations and software packages that are available. Both give the cwop.net link that is now active as is cwop.info.
December 2004 - Davis has recently released version 5.5 of their Weatherlink software. This release fixes a problem with barometer calibration which should improve data quality. Complete details on how to set-up this version are here.
November 2004 - Changes: 1)There have been a number of recent changes to the findu.com server including a new weather display page; 2)The Weather-Display software, version 10.19t, now has capability to automatically change to a different server when there is a server problem.
October 2004 - For some time, CWOP has kept a list of member web pages where links to the many member web pages are listed. Now, in addition to web pages, we also list links to member web cams. If you'd like to have links to your web page or web cam listed, let us know.
September 2004 - When Hurricane Jeanne made landfall, the NOAA Observing System between Melbourne and Miami in eastern Florida was disrupted. However, two CWOP stations continued to report measurements after other weather stations had gone silent. Both Emilio Sanseviero and David Lane had equipped their stations with back-up power. Emilio's DSL service went down when the eyewall was overhead, but David's remained up during the eyewall passage. Both stations were undamaged by Jeanne (and Frances earlier) and were sending data as soon as DSL service was restored. More details are here.
September 2004 - CWOP meta-data are now part of the NOSA database. Open the "OAR" folder and then click the square next to "FSL-CWOP". There are many ways to view the contents of the NOAA Observing System Architecture (NOSA) database with this viewer.
September 2004 - On September 10, a presentation titled "Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) for Collection and Use of Citizen Weather Data" was given at the NWS Great Divide Weather Workshop (GDWW) sponsored by the Billings, MT Weather Forecast Office. The GDWW2004 presentation is about 2 MB and can be downloaded here.
August 2004 - Hurricane Charley came ashore and passed over central Florida on August 14. Here are some radar and data images for CWOP stations taken by Dave Helms (CW0351) during the hurricane passage. More info on Hurricane Charley
April 2004 - The National Weather Service in Huntsville, Alabama and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have recognized two local recipients for this year's NOAA Environmental Hero Award. The 2004 recipients include two CWOP members, Anthony Guillory (K4ARG) and Paul Meyer (KF4TTB), recognized for their extraordinary level of personal time and support toward development of a Northern Alabama observing network. Through their contacts with the amateur radio community, Anthony and Paul have deployed 8 surface weather stations and registered them with CWOP. Most of these sites are operated by private amateur radio operators, and Anthony and Paul have strengthened the bond between the "ham" community and the National Weather Service across the Tennessee Valley. "The addition of these weather stations has enhanced the surface observing capabilities of the NWS in northern Alabama and adjacent states. Benefits include more precise analyses of weather elements associated with severe thunderstorm initiation and excessive rainfall, as well as improved validation of high resolution gridded forecast products" according to Tom Bradshaw, SOO, Huntsville WFO.
April 2004 - The Picnic Rock Wildfire in Northern Colorado had burned 8,700 acres and one house by April 3. It had also forced the evacuation of 139 homes. The closest reporting weather station, 10 miles south of the fire, was CWOP station WA0BAG-5 at 7142 feet on Bagg Mountain. Reporting weather data within 20 miles of the fire, there were five CWOP stations, one Colorado DOT station, one NWS/FAA station, and one USFS RAWS station. Here's more information.
April 2004 - A capability to sent MADIS Quality Checking and Monitoring System reports to CWOP station operators by e-mail is now available. Details under item # 3 on Data Quality page (link on left side above).
March 2004 - There is a new capability on findu.com that allows recall and display of historical CWOP weather data since April, 2000. To access this capability, enter this historical data URL and make the appropriate changes to the date and call parameters. The parameter "last" is the total time window that will be recalled and is limited to 48 hours or less.
March 2004 - On March 6, there was a tragic water taxi accident in Baltimore Harbor that caused five deaths. Initial investigation reports indicate that the accident was due to an unexpected high wind gust. CWOP station, CW1550, operated by Gus Campbell at his home in Halethorpe, MD about 5 miles west of the accident site, measured this isolated 53 mph gust between 2045 and 2100 UTC. This may be the wind gust that caused the accident at about 2100 or 4:00 PM. Gus reports that "About 3:51PM on Saturday 3/6, a squall blew through on the leading edge of a front. The sun was shining brightly the whole time. There was a 180 rainbow afterward."
February 2004 - The CWOP was discussed in the Sun Coast Weather Quarterly, under the title "Share Your Weather Station with Others!". This weather related newsletter is published by the NWS Tampa Bay Weather Forecast Office.
January 2004 - CWOP starts an on-line store, sort of. CafePress is distributing many items with the CWOP logo displayed in full color. The arrangement allows the lowest possible prices to our members. CWOP gets no money from this since we're entirely non-profit and all-volunteer. Quite frankly, we wouldn't know what to do with money if we got any. Some of the items have the catchy slogan "Storm Chasing for Couch Potatoes" in addition to the logo.
December 2003 - This NWS news item tells about the Fifth Annual Skywarn Appreciation Day and how amateur radio operators contribute to the Skywarn program of detecting and warning of hazardous weather.
November 2003 - California Wildfires data have been available on the MesoWest Weather near Fires web page, which shows the available CWOP data. Analysis of data from MesoWest showed for surface measurements within 25 miles of each of the three fires east of Los Angeles during a 2 hour period on the afternoon of Nov 1: for the Padua fire, 4 of 24 observations were from CWOP stations; for the Grand Prix fire, 3 of 20 observations were from CWOP stations; and for the Old fire, 2 of 16 observations were from CWOP stations. So, for these fires during this period, CWOP stations were supplying about 15% of the surface observations available to forecasters. Information is on page 14 here and more information is here.
October 2003 - There is a new capability on findu.com that lists the faulty packets that have been received in the past day. Most of the bad packets appear to be non-weather packets, but weather users should still check occasionally and make sure they are not on this list.
September 2003 - CWOP data are now going to MesoWest, a cooperative organization between the National Weather Service and the University of Utah. They acquire weather data from around the United States and send these data to all 24 NWS Weather Forecast Offices in the Western Region of the NWS. Here is a list of data contributors, and a status page. More information is available in this news release.
August 2003 - Added many new stations from Europe to CWOP because of the heat wave there and its effects. To make it easier to look at the weather reports from Europe, all the stations are now grouped by country. You can select the country you want by clicking on the two letter internet code here.
July 2003 - In the July/August issue of Weatherwise, there's a 4-page article "Extra eyes: The benefits of personal weather stations extend beyond home". It describes how data from citizen home weather stations are being used at several places across the country. On page 28 of the printed version is a sidebar box titled CWOP. Unfortunately, this sidebar is not in the on-line version. It said "The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) was developed by amateur radio volunteers at the National Hurricane Center and the Forecast Systems Laboratory to utilize citizen-based weather data. Nearly 2,000 owners of home weather stations from 23 countries provide real-time updates to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Every 15 minutes, the main server gathers Internet data from registered CWOP stations and sends it to NOAA. After the data are checked for quality, they are funneled to relevant government and educational institutions including the NWS forecast offices, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the Office of Homeland Security. For more information, see www.wxqa.com or www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw/CWOP-Main.html."
June 2003 - Word was received that a forest fire near Tucson, AZ destroyed an APRSWXNET/CWOP weather station near the summit of Mt Lemmon. Maps and pictures of the site are here under Lemmon. This was the 20th site that joined APRSWXNET and we hope that it gets restored.
February 2003 - CWOP temperature data were used by the Melbourne, Florida WFO (Weather Forecast Office) for freeze warnings in the southeast United States. More information and comments from a forecaster are here.
January 2003 - The twenty station REALM (Really Exploring And Learning Meteorology) network of weather stations at Miami area schools, has joined CWOP. Information on the schools is available here, with links to the REALM home page and to the REALM page on findu.com at the bottom. We are happy to contribute the use of APRS-IS, findu.com, CWOP, and MADIS infrastructure to this fine educational program.
August 2002 - The MADIS program will be receiving more observations from citizen operated weather stations to help enhance homeland security. These data are becoming available through an agreement between the NWS and AWS. More information is available here.
April 2002 - Several Maryland CWOP stations acquired and transmitted real-time weather data during the La Plata,Maryland tornado. This incident was covered by The Weather Notebook, a nationally-syndicated radio show about weather and everyday life. That report is here.
April 2002 - Steve Dimse, who developed the findu.com server that acquires all the CWOP data, received a NOAA Environmental Hero award for his contributions. More information is contained in this National Ocean Service press release.
| Page generated on Sept 04, 2006. Site maintained by Russ Chadwick, KB0TVJ. Send any comments to russ@wxqa.com. |
![[LOGO]](http://www.wxqa.com/archive/cwp_logo.gif){kind=logo}
