VANCOUVER ISLAND WINDTALK • Website Status
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Website Status

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:03 pm
by bwd
I'll try to post here if anything on the website goes down. There's a lot to try and keep going and it's keeping me busy:

5 webcams
3 of the webcams are reliable and have built in computers. The cams at Island View and Gordons Beach are run using desktop computers and they can and will go down occasionally, especially the Gordons cam #1.

2 weather stations
These are run using desktop computers and they also go down and need to be reset.

My home computer
It does the Latest Reports page and the MM5 model tables and it can crash occasionally too.

Gordons Beach

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:05 pm
by bwd
Gordons Beach weather station and cam#1

Hopefully I figured out a way to keep the weather station and cam#1 running longer by using a simple electronic timer that forces the computer to reboot every morning. We'll see how long it keeps running for now.

Columbia Beach weather station

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:07 pm
by bwd
Columbia Beach weather station

The Columbia Beach weather station will be down for a while. It looks the computer won't start up likely due to a dead power supply or motherboard. Hopefully we can get it going in a few weeks. The webcam is fine.

Sept 25, 2005: columbia beach weather station is back online

NOAA sites are down

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:58 am
by bwd
NOAA sites not updating

As JL mentioned, the NOAA sites are down due to hurricane Katrina (not sure why, maybe they had their servers down there?). This effects Tatoosh Island, Smith Island, Neah Bay, Hein Bank. Without Tatoosh and Smith there is also no Pressure Gradient or wind predictor.

Sept 5, 2005 11:00: All NOAA sites are back online now.

Columbia Beach Wind Direction Problems

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:40 pm
by bwd
The Columbia Beach weather station is sometimes reporting the wrong wind directions - mostly SW instead of SE. It only seems to happen for short time periods. I'm not sure what's wrong, but I'll have to looks at the wiring next time I'm up there. It seems to be a sensor problem instead of a computer/software problem.

The wind speeds seem fairly accurate now with the longer mast (thanks to Wingnut for supplying that!), just use Ballenas for the wind directions...probably obvious to most people.

Fixed Dec 4th 2005

Re: Columbia Beach Wind Direction Problems

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 6:34 pm
by bwd
bigwavedave wrote:The Columbia Beach weather station is sometimes reporting the wrong wind directions - mostly SW instead of SE. It only seems to happen for short time periods. I'm not sure what's wrong, but I'll have to looks at the wiring next time I'm up there. It seems to be a sensor problem instead of a computer/software problem.
I finally managed to get up to CB on Dec 4th and redo the splice on the weather station cable. I've been checking it ever since and it seems to be fixed now. So I think we can trust the wind directions from the CB weather station again - all we need now is some real wind...please.