Too busy for news, but was I the only one working away last week that failed to see the website update?

I reported a fault to BT on Monday 15th and it was 'escalated' to BT Wholesale. This problem was a very slow connection plus no FTP from the weather machine meaning no updates on the weather station. On Tuesday I received a mobile call telling me it was tweaked and some other stuff. On arriving home on Friday, I found the FTP suddenly working when it had not been up to that afternoon from Chippenham. Mmm!!!

Well over the weekend, the "BT Broadband up to 8Mb" has been working at 120kb (twice the speed of a modem). I've now been told I've downloaded too much, so wait until the end of the month. It did not matter that I've been away with work Mon-Fri with little time at weekend, and asking for a factual answer rather than what the buffoon on the end of line believed got me nowhere. Anyway, I am being called tomorrow to tell me exactly home much I've downloaded each day this month. Whoopee! As soon as I get a free moment, BT broadband can take a hike. I'm paying over the odds, but balance that against the fact it is a company connection with so say unlimited downloads, as if I actually used them. Then it was suggested my Wi-Fi network was being used by people unknown. It doesn't seem to matter that the network is so secure, only hardware I've allowed can access it along with the secured password. But this helpdesk guessing/nonsense is beyond me. I wonder how they treat people who know nothing, and don't have a free phone helpline?

So I am sorry if your weather has been interupted, but there are some back up addresses in place.

This one can produce graphical content for any day YOU choose. http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ITHATCHA1

If you find www.thatcham-weather.info is not responding, try http://weather.kennetsignalling.com/index.html as this bypasses the normal address and leads you to the behind the scenes pages.

Of course these two links assume the weather station is running, with no power interuptions, and a basic broadband connection at this end. But you need to save them to your favourites NOW, or you will not know them when you need them.

Oh, and Heart Internet are still wonderful. Must find the time to move the hosting to them as well.

Happy New Year :-)
Since the November fiasco, my domain hosting is behaving itself. I never recommend anything as I tend not to trust people who recommend products they have paid for. Why? Well these same people are hardly going to admit they have paid good money for a 2nd or 4th rate product. I notice this effect (albeit quietly) all of the time. That said, Heart Internet are wonderful.

The 2008 menus should be operational now, with 2007 joining the archives. It's ALL available under the 'Historical' menu.

I've been much too busy to study the weather. My daughters are now 1 and 4 years old, both healthy and even more beautiful by the day (See above why I do not recommend anything, and in case I am thought to be biased... No! If they were fuelled on Sunny Delight I would not mention them, but they are really lovely children, the like Which? would give 100/100 and a Best Buy! I do trust Which? (formerly the consumers association)) University studies are quiet having taken the mathematical modelling exam in October (passed), but are about to get awkward again as the new course starts in February. (Astro-physics). On top of this, I've been working night shifts since July 07. Add these things to the rest of my life and apart from my mind exisiting in a strange balance of imploding and exploding and there's hardly time to write this.

But 2007 - RECORDS!
Wettest year with 961.0 mm which is 142% of the 30 year mean.
Hopefully the wettest day for the next 100 years after parts of Thatcham FLOODED and are still being repaired. This day saw 97.3 mm fall in an approximate 14 hour period with 75 mm falling in a three hour period. You need to take into account an amount of over 25 mm in a day only happens a few times per year. The flood was a remarkable event which I have discussed further with various University studies that feed into national programmes, and more recently a local resident who now knows significantly more about this event including almost 200 years of OS maps records. Hopefully he, along with other affected residents will get Thames Water to realise although this flood was not their fault, they will need to do something to protect homes in the future, especially with the threat of global warming meaning a bit like this year, it's been windy, cool and wet.
Windiest year with 50936 miles of wind run. This is how far an imaginary boat with have been blown last year by the wind passing over my roof. More than twice around the world, or a fifth of the way to the moon.
Coolest maximum temperature on record at 28.5 °C.

The website may or may not experience a short period of down time in the next 10 to 20 minutes as I've spent some money to move away from the clowns that were once award winning and respected.

In fact I'm in the process of transferring all of my domain names from www.123-reg.co.uk to www.heartinternet.co.uk. They are actually cheaper which is a bonus, but the good news is they do not have the RANTS of '123-reg' on blogs and forums you find via Google. The 123-reg website still is completely quiet on the havoc they caused this weekend. I'd feel a little happier towards them if they just admitted they messed-up, but to post nothing!

Oops! I can't post this message as FTP currently points at Heart Internet. The webspace IP address where the weather pages actually reside is currently propogating through the ether as of 15:49.

I'd love to apologise for the lack of service during the previous 36 hours, but in this case I WILL NOT; read on.

During the last month I've spent over £700 pounds on computer hardware to ensure Thatcham Weather continued to exist into the future, let alone the cost annual costs of silly things like batteries, 24hr electricity, insurance, (duplicate) weather hardware in case something fails, improved webcams, or my time when I could have been out earning real money, or playing with / teaching my daughters the alphabet, how to count, and why when I throw them up in the air, kinetic energy is transferred to gravitational potential energy and then back to kinetic, yet also adds an infinite amount of laughter that appears to come from nowhere. Then they learn about conservation of angular momentum, but I guess I am loosing you now... But what fun we have!

Yet this weekend the company I pay money to for the name "www.thatcham-weather.info" failed catastrophically. I've personally got more than ten domain names with 'them', but fortunately none of them bring in an income. Other customers of 'theirs' do run businesses and are pulling their hair out!

The failure was so unusual it is being talked about in online US technical publications just 12 hours after it happened. And instead of unusual, the describe it using terms such as 'incompetent', 'buffoons', 'disgrace' etc. Actual customers are shouting four letter words, including the C word!

I am already investigating ways out of this mess knowing it may cost even more money. So I cannot promise better service today, tomorrow, next week, month, year, but I will spend time I do not really have and perhaps more money to get rid of this pooh.

Sorry if I sound a bit<g> upset, but I supply Thatcham Weather for free, for the benefit of anybody that might be interested, at the same time willingly footing all costs. I'm lucky I have all of the data next to me, but if I am going to bother to run the site, I want it to work reliably.

I know one or two of you know the 'back door' way into this site. So if you really do want to know the weather, you can get around 'this' particular problem by using the 'real' address of the weather station data which is based in the USA. But PLEASE continue to use www.thatcham-weather.info as this is the station URL and can point anywhere of my choosing, but for the time being at least, it points to http://weather.kennetsignalling.com/home.html, where all of the weather 'stuff' is hosted (yet another cost!). The Thatcham Weather address (URL) is just a pointer from the 'company' (or some might say retards<vbg>) I pay to own the name.

Only use the second URL in an emergency, else it will create many more problems than it solves, but at least those problems will be of your own making<g>. And be aware, if I am moving companies, I will also be investigating the cost of the web hosting site (where the data currently resides), as the 'special offer' could well be expensive in November 2007. And the hosting site also had a spectacular screw-up of their own in 2006, but at least they learnt from it and have been 100% available since.

It's not the first time this company has fallen over, but I do expect them to in the future. So I will not simply jump, but do a bit of homework as the grass isn't always greener etc... But rest assured, when I move, I'll get things running in parallel and post a warning message that the site will be down for a short period of time. I'll also try to do it overnight as less of you are trying to view, I'll even look at the historically quietest day of the week.

The domain name registration company are www.123-reg.co.uk (I would suggest you try elsewhere, and there seems to be no relation between cost and 'goodness', so beware). Even now, 123-reg do not have a mention of this problem on their own webpages. Even more Fawlty Towers like, yesterday their own support page was missing because of this. It's so awful, you have to laugh :-)

From the previous posting.
I also rebooted the weather PC for the first time, and apart from a hectic 5 minutes of manual panic, it is working. As long as there is not a power cut, whoopee. (Although I now need to think about power cuts before they happen.)

A drought of news again. I put this down to working nights since July and my Open University course. Well at least the exam is over and there is a lull in studying until February.

Over the previous 3 weeks, the weather station and camera software has been moved to a new Dell PC. This was partly due to the CPU intensive video processing, the need to have at least two PC's running 24 hours per day and the noise of more than a dozen fans and around ten hard drives spinning away. The new machine copes with everything, and is virtually silent. In fact it is quiet enough to be eery. And being politically correct, I'll probably cut my carbon footprint too!

The new PC uses Vista Ultimate as the operating system. Although similar to XP Professional, it is different in so much as it does not like running software!
Are you sure you want to run this program? (Yes.)
Are you really, really sure? (YES!)
As Virtual Weather Station may be a malicious program, Microsoft has decided the program will not run to protect you from yourself. It's for you own good. (#&*£@*& bleep.)
Microsoft heard those comments and will now shut down the PC. Thank you for choosing Vista...

To date, everything has been forced to work, but I'm dreading the next time the PC has to reboot.

Unless you are colour blind, you may have noticed a difference.

In the mean time, July 07 is the wettest month on record. It was also cooler than the 30 year average (global warming, everything is global warming. I almost feel like ranting, but if I do that the government will no doubt introduce a rant tax.) The floods on the 20th can be found via youtube etc. I feel sorry for bungalows very close by that still have all of their possessions stacked in the gardens. I also realise how lucky I am to be living on ever-so-slightly higher ground.

I also realise the site partially stopped updating a week ago for just over 24 hours, nothing I could do as I was working away.

I'm sorry the sky photo (and video) stopped updating yesterday. I was working away for 48 hours and noticed the problem, but was unable to correct it at the time. It was caused by a PC rebooting (it does this about once per month). Now back at home, I've just altered the machine so the required programs auto-load on a reboot. Fingers crossed, but a few tests I've performed were encouraging.
Whilst here, I've added an hourly video so you don't have to download the whole day to see what the weather has been doing in the last hour.
I'm not sure how long the following link will exist, but it contains a very good set of photos of last weeks flood taken from the A4 2 miles east of the station. Fortunately the weather station avoided this.
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=15202&posts=13

Rain; although the road outside is now dry, roads within 1/4 mile are closed due to flooding. There are fire engines from neighbouring counties pumping water, roads and pavements lifted due to overloaded drains, shops closed due to flooding, mobile phone network overloaded or out of action, roads blocked by abandoned cars etc. The railway has been closed as the track is under water, the M4 motorway is at a stand due to a landslide.

Since this station began recording in October 2002 it has been rare for 25mm (an inch) of rain fall in a day. In 2006 there were just two days with falls over 25mm; in 2007 there have been 4 days so far. The wettest day ever until today recorded 35.0mm which occurred in May of this year. But that rain fell over the whole 24 hours, which allowed it to drain away. Todays rain, not only being almost 3 times as much which is impressive itself, mostly fell in 3 hour period between 10:00 and 13:00 at an approximate rate of 25mm per hour. This has led to the problems mentioned above.

Rain; Well the current storm has already beaten every precipitation record the station had! Well not just beaten it, but literally washed them away. And the rain is still falling very heavily.

Wind speeds. I am aware the wind speed reports 125.7mph when thunderstorms are close by. These values are removed as soon as I spot them.

The anemometer has been fitted to a new mast. At the same time, a brand new battery/solar panel/transmitter panel was fitted as the batteries were due for renewal, plus UV exposure has started to take its toll on the existing unit.

Last year the highest recorded wind gust was 38mph, and so far this year there have been 3 days with wind gusts in excess of 50mph.

(NEWS - It never rains, but it pours...)
It's not that there has been no news, but no time to write.

Yesterday's gale. Apart from breaking four to five panels out of the garden fence and doing some other damage, the mast holding the anemometer is bent over about 20 degrees and making strange groaning noises. Being bolted to the house, the whole building is echoing with the spooky noises. Fortunately the anemometer is still working, so something positive to be going on with!

The 18th literally 'blew away' (no wonder the mast is groaning, it's not the wind, but statements like that) the station wind speed record with a gust of 58.61 mph (94.3km/h). I find it interesting that just last week (11th), the station recorded the highest wind speed since Oct02 and a week later it is once again windy enough to take the absolute record.
A second wind related record was broken yesterday. Wind Run now stands at 425.1 miles for a 24 hour period. (Wind run is a measure of how far the station would have been blown if it was moving with the air passing over the station.) The wind run record requires the wind to blow strongly for the whole 24 hour period rather than simply have a record gust. Yesterday we had both!

Another interesting fact for 2007 to date is no air frost (temp below 0'C) has been recorded since the 22nd December. Very unlike winter.

2006 Weather.
TEMPERATURES
The hottest day on record with 37.0'C on the 19th July
The coldest day time temperature of -0.6'C on the 2nd February. (It's not all global warming...), and the first time the station has failed to thaw during daytime.
WIND
Windiest Year - Wind Run 44,681 miles, enough to be blown around the world 2.9 times at the station latitude.
BAROMETER
The highest station reading of 1045 mb on the 21st/22nd December. You may remember the lingering fog at this time.
Speaking of FOG, during this period the station also had another record set. That of 4 consecutive days where the average wind speed was 0 mph, including two remarkable days where the maximum wind speed for the 24 hour period was also 0 mph. To put this into context, there were only 5 days with an average wind speed of zero in 2006. During 2005 there was just a single day (November). The last day the wind did not blow was January 2004. So to get 4 consecutive calm days, including 2 with zero maximum wind speed it quite unusual.
RAIN
By far the wettest year on record with 37% more rain than the previous annual record.
2006 also has the top 3 totals for rain fall recorded in a month. (Oct/Dec/May).
2006 also has the wettest month on record for seven individual months.
The last 4 months of 2006 had rain fall considerably more than the station average for those months, and if just another 2.9mm is recorded in January, it will also be the wettest January on record.
Coincidently, the hosepipe ban was lifted yesterday. Perhaps there will be too much water in Thames Water during the Spring. Maybe the water bills will be reduce...

Webcams.
The driveway image is no longer public as a thoughtful site user pointed out that it would be easy for a burglar to work out the pattern when nobody was at home. There can be times when there are no cars on the driveway and people are at home, and there are cars, but nobody is at home. But it is perhaps best to be cautious.
The weather camera is currently unable to upload more than one image at a time (different software under test), so there are no 'last 8/24hrs' pages available at present. I purchased two new cameras, but they both want to take up 100% of the processing power which affects the PC I use daily too much. The camera will be sorted by the time the days are longer. Something under test that is working very well is the site will get a 'streaming' webcam page at some point.

Rain gauge.
Since the start of the year, the rain gauge has been modified to record the rain fall pattern more accurately. The gauge 'as supplied' only records rain when effectively 1mm of rain sits on the tipping bucket (balance). Of course, during drizzle the gauge may not record 1mm for a long period, so the day appears to be dry although there maybe puddles on the pavement. And 1mm of rain fall is a lot wetter than you would first imagine. During 2006 the gauge had been modified with a funnel made from a water bottle. This had twice the collecting area of the standard funnel, so the station could report rain fall in increments of 0.5mm. But since the end of December, I've purchased a 12" funnel from E-bay and with corrections due to the fact the diameter is less than 12", and a few other required tweaks, rain now reports in 0.14mm increments. This has resulted in smoother graphs, rain fall being reported much sooner, and the period of rain fall being easier to calculate. So if you live locally and wonder what the heck that thing is sitting in the garden, now you know. Quite a few people walking dogs have been stopped in their tracks, don't panic, it's not a spaceship.

And from previous news, Zara Miranda was born in Reading on 2nd September at 00:25. She is healthy and the most content, quietest baby I've ever known. [Not science: I've only really known two, but observed loads...] Her older sister Jasmine (3 years) has taken to her sister arriving in her world and loves her.

The results for my physics course / summer school study were announced the week before Christmas and I did scarily well. This year I am about to start the Mathematic Methods and Modelling Course (MST209) and right now the results are predicted to be scarily bad in Dec07.

The weather station, software, weather computer, web hosting, British Telecom and Southern Electric have been remarkably stable of late. There has been the odd hiccup, but nothing to write about which is just as well given how little time I've had to write.

I'm intending to upload some Excel produced charts at some point. All the data above is already on the site, but charts put it into pictures. The rain fall chart will be the first.

A couple of good websites to monitor weather in real time. I will add these to the 'forecast' page, although may have to change the menu as it is not a forecast...
Not much Thunder at this time of year, but a German site called Blitzortung has live lightning for Europe, and you can also download standalone viewers from the site that run themselves on your PC.
And for rain, I've yet to see better than Meteox, (and it's free).

Time to think about the fence, the roof off of Jasmine's play barn that is in the field at the end of the garden and a new mast for the anemometer...