Weather Stations at Starlight Cascade

Page Created: 2003 September 03
Page Last Updated: 2011 December 04
Welcome to the Starlight Cascade website!
Clear Sky Clock for
Starlight Cascade

Clear Sky Clock for Starlight Cascade

Weather Station

EnvCan Kingston Forecast * TWN Forecast * Radar * WS * Sat

Our weather underground station ID is IOntario51

Starlight Cascade in Eastern Ontario Canada near Yarker, about 25 minutes northwest of Kingston, Ontario in the Township of Stone Mills
44.22 North Latitude 76.45 West Longitude 155M Elevation
and you can see our data by clicking on the weather icon to the left.

A new Weather Station for Christmas! What more could one ask for? An Oregon WMR968 weather station arrived on Christmas Day 2006 and was set up just a few hours later. It has wireless data capability so the base station has moved from the observatory and into the house. Remote units cover the greenhouse and the garage. Wooohoo! We use FreeWX-wi v1.01 for software.

wmr968 weather station kit
The Kit
WMR968 manual (1mb PDF)
The Receiver
This weather station does not detect lightning strikes, although we are looking into adding sensors for that.
You can find a lightning detection station here, based out of Fergus Ontario.
Kingston is over 400km away from the station and the web page says that it only works well out to 300km?

Data file

All data is in text CSV format. All data logged from the new (2006December) Oregon WMR968 station.

Click Here for the Weather Data Archive

Log

2011 October 09 - moved outdoor temp/humidity sensor off deck and onto a maple tree, sensor on the north side about 2m off the ground and the solar panel on the south side about 1m off the ground helping to pwoer the unit. We noticed that the temperatures were a little higher when the sensor was near the deck, it being a massive heat sink after all.

2010 Aug 16 - new temperature/humidity sensor installed and operational.

2010 Aug 10 - The outdoor temperature/pressure/humidity sensor/transmitter is broken until a replacement is found.

2011 March - reconfigured the weather data archive above and uploaded data into 2011February. Would still like to find another software package that generates better local data rather than rely on The Weather Underground for a web page summary display, as they have been up and down of late.

2010 August - the sensor stopped transmitting three more times and finally died. The freewx software does not seem to send data up to the Weather Underground if there is no outside temperature either. So the station will be down and offline until we can purchase the replacement $85 part, an Oregon THGR-968 Cable Free Solar Powered Thermo-Hygro Sensor.

2010 July - the thermo-hygrometer sensor was no longer being received by the receiver so we moved it from the observatory mount (about 40m and two house wall away), to a shady spot near the deck about 8m away and no house walls to contend with. The data started to flow again! The system consists of:
The thermo-hygrometer sensor with a range of -58F to 158F and resolution of 0.2F. Humidity range is 2% to 96% RH with resolution of 1%. Updates oiccur every 37 seconds. Powered by a solar cell with akaline battery backup.
The anemometers operating range is up to 125mph with resolution of +- 0.4mph. Data updates every 14 seconds. powered by a solar cell with akaline battery backup.
The rain guage uses a self emptying collection unit. Range is up to 39" per hour with resolution of 0.04" transmission update every 47 seconds. solar cell and battery backup.
the indoor baro-hygrometer meaders indoor temp and humidity. range is 23F to 122F with accuracy of 0.2F, humidity range s 2% to 96% RH with accuracy of 1%. pressure range from 23.48 in HG to 31.01 in Hg with accuracy of 0.03 in hg.

20080606 - updated 2008 data files. Note that freewx-wi is showing signs of age. For each of the last 5 days it has frozen near midnight when the logs get rotated. So we are actively looking for a new software data logger and web/weather underground weather program.

20071002 - moved wind sensor from observatory to clothlines pole that is more in the open and less sheltered, and a little higher, from 2 m to 3 m up. Also moved weather station receiver from basement farthest away from sensors to upstairs in the middle of the house, a little closer.

20070515 - moved the temperature sensor a little more north into the shade of the observatory.

20070427 - updated the website to include some new features from the weather underground and linked in other nearby weather stations.

20070225 - started uploading data files to the web site.

20061226 - installed FreeWx-Wi software and started uploading data to the weather underground.

WMR968 2006 December 25 - installed new Oregon wmr968 wireless weather station in and around the observatory. The white things are the three sensors (rain, wind, air) and their solar panels/transmitters. The white bucket is used to shield the temperature probe, along with the observatory walls, from direct sunlight. The nearer dome is the first allsky camera, still under development. The farther dome is the new CONCAM camera still under development.

Weather Station

Data file

Click Here for the Weather Data Archive

Log

Other weather related links