chronoskin

weather, tides and a home-made rain gauge. updated when it rains.

This is a log of the weather on one marsh.

One person, four instruments, no pictures. The newest entry is at the top and every reading ever taken is in a table you can download.

Get the readings or read the archive

2017-03-14 21:42

The rain gauge finally agrees with the bucket

After three weeks of drift the tipping gauge now reads within two percent of the plain bucket beside it. The fault was a spider, not the electronics, which is the kind of answer the calibration notes never prepare you for.

Total for the month so far is 61.4 mm, most of it in two nights. The marsh path was under water on the ninth.

What changed

Nothing clever. The funnel has a mesh over it and the reed switch was moved a little closer to the magnet.

  • Mesh over the funnel, 2 mm holes.
  • Switch moved 1 mm closer to the magnet.
  • Bucket emptied and compared every morning for a week.

Reading the log file

Each tip is one line with a timestamp. Run tips --since 2017-03-01 to count them, then multiply by 0.2 to get millimetres.

filed under instruments | 12 comments | permalink

Earlier entries

  • A wind vane made from a baking tray new

    It points the right way about as often as the forecast does, and it cost nothing.

    2017-03-09 | instruments | 4 comments

  • Spring tide over the sea wall

    Highest water since the log began. The gauge post survived; the notebook did not.

    2017-03-05 | tides | 21 comments

  • February in numbers

    Nineteen dry days, one gale, and a thermometer that froze to its bracket.

    2017-03-01 | summaries | 3 comments

Sections

Instruments

Gauges, vanes and repairs. 84 entries. Browse

Tides

High water, low water, floods. 51 entries. Browse

Summaries

One entry for every month. 37 entries. Browse

Asides

One line each, no comments. 412 entries. Browse

  1. log
  2. archive
  3. 2017

Archive for 2017

Every entry written this year, newest month first.

  • 57 entries
  • 483 comments
  • 212.6 mm of rain
  • 31,400 words
MonthLongest entryDiscussionComments
March 2017The rain gauge finally agrees with the bucketopen43
February 2017The barometer is wrong againopen118
January 2017Fog, four days of itclosing96
December 2016A year of high waterclosed72
November 2016The gauge post goes inclosed154

Filed under snow

Nothing is filed under “snow” yet. It has not snowed.

Back to the log
  1. log
  2. instruments
  3. A wind vane made from a baking tray

A wind vane made from a baking tray

2017-03-09 18:10, filed under instruments. Comments are open until 2017-04-08.

All entries

The shop vane lasted one winter. This one is a baking tray cut along the diagonal, a bicycle spoke and the bearing out of a dead hard disk, and it has now pointed the right way for eleven days running.

It turns in less wind than the old one did. That is the bearing, not the tray: the tray is only there because it was flat and already ruined.

If it looks home-made, that is because it is. The wind does not mind.

Readings from it go into the same table as everything else, eight compass points and no more, because that is as well as anyone can read a tray from a kitchen window.

4 comments

Received. Your comment is held until someone has read it. That can take a day.

  • jpJonas Pell

    What stops it spinning right round in a gust? Mine did, and then it unscrewed itself.

    2017-03-09 22:05 | reply | delete

  • ivInes Varga

    Nothing stops it. The spoke is bent over at the top, so it can spin as long as it likes.

    2017-03-10 07:31 | reply

  • maMarit Aas

    A tray is steel. Give it a year by the sea and you will be writing this entry again.

    2017-03-11 12:48 | reply

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  1. log
  2. readings
  3. March 2017

Readings, March 2017

One line a day, taken at 09:00. Nothing is smoothed or corrected.

  • 61.4 mm of rain
  • 71 km/h, strongest gust
  • 5.92 m, highest tide
  • -2.1 °C, coldest night
DayWindStateRain, mmHigh tide, mNight low, °C
Week 11
Tue 14SW, freshread4.25.316.4
Mon 13W, strongread18.65.487.0
Week 10
Sun 12W, galeestimated21.05.925.2
Sat 11NW, lightread0.05.601.8
Fri 10N, lightread0.05.44-2.1
Thu 9not readmissing7.85.710.3
Wed 8S, moderateread2.45.394.9
Tue 7SE, lightread0.25.123.3
  1. log
  2. about

About this log

Who keeps it, how it is made and what you may do with it.

Who writes this

Ines Varga keeps the instruments on a marsh she can see from her kitchen and answers mail slowly. 12 entries this month, filed under instruments tides. Comments on an entry are open for thirty days, closing in the last week and closed after that.

How it is made

Every entry is a text file. A script of forty lines turns the files into pages and copies them to a server that costs less than the batteries in the rain gauge. There is no database, so there is nothing to back up except the files, and they are in the archive for anyone to take.

  1. Write the entry in a text editor.
  2. Run make log.
  3. Read it once on the real page, then leave it alone.

What you may do with it

Copy what you like. The readings are facts and belong to nobody; the entries are mine, and you may quote them at any length if you say where they came from.

What it does not do

Does it count me?

No. It does not count you, follow you or remember you.

What is kept when I comment?

Your name beside the comment, and only if you tick the box. The address is read once and thrown away.

May I have the readings as a file?

Yes. Every month is a plain text file, and so is every year since 2014.

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