No anemometer yet? Try MADIS

[alancorey]

I stumbled across this when I was trying to find old weather forecasts the morning after trying a new set of blades.  It isn't as good as having your own anemometer, but it might be better than looking at a regional forecast.  United States only, as far as I know.  You need to have Java installed and working as a plugin within your web browser.

Start here: http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/mesonet/ and you should see something like this national view.  It will probably take a while to load, since it's loading a Java applet and some data.  Seeing a blank map at first is a good sign.

If you get something like this



then your Java isn't working.  You may also get a page without an image or any notification about plugins missing in this case.  Download and install the Java plugin from Sun and restart your browser.

Draw a box with your mouse around your location and let up your mouse button.  The window will zoom to the box you drew.  If you didn't get it right, use the Un-zoom button.

Hovering your mouse over one of the stations should show you something like this:

In this you can see the location, elevation, last temperature and pressure reading.  The time for that data is also given (1446Z or 14:46 GMT here).

Click on the station and you'll see something like this:

This is the top of a bunch of data that goes back 12 hours or so.  The wind speed and direction are toward the right side as direction, then speed, then gust speed, right before it goes into precipitation.  If these columns are blank or zeroes, then this station isn't providing this information.  You can highlight this data and copy it off the screen with Ctrl-C and paste it into a text editor.

I've got 4 or 5 stations within a few miles of me, but only one has wind speed.  You'll need to get familiar with the stations in your area.  There seem to be about 24,000 stations in the country so most everyone should have one not far away.  Aside from remembering which ones have wind speed though, you need to bear in mind which ones might be on the same sides of mountain ranges as your site and details like that.

So good luck, and pay attention to NOAA's disclaimer that they don't own the stations and aren't responsible for their accuracy.  Neither am I.  :-)

  Alan

[stop4stuff]

that's pretty neat.

& it does go worldwide (click on the 'world' button).

i just found a couple of weather stations within a few miles either side of my home in the uk

[alancorey]

I'm not sure why I didn't try the World button before I posted that.

I found another way for my location that's a little more convenient.  The closest station to me with wind speed data is a ham, and he's got a web site where he goes into quite a bit of detail about his weather recording/reporting.  He's running a commercial software package which kicks out a web page every so often or on demand.  One of the things in it is a nice little gif file that's a plot of wind speed for the last 24 hours.  If you Google for WindSpeedHistory.gif and use the images tab you can find all the people running that software that Google's found (427 right now).  Now you just have to figure out one that's close to you.  Going about it from the MADIS direction might work better.

The one near me is at http://www.k1ttt.net/wx/WindSpeedHistory.gif and it seems like it might be generated on the fly like some web page counters are.

  Alan

[ghurd]

Crap^2.

I tried to (couldn't) find this for my wife.  Somehow this is important to bike riders too.

I see 3 places within 20 miles of here, 3 miles being the closest.

I see every one I know of, of the State of Ohio funded (meaning me) Air-X sites listed. (NOAA's disclaimer?)

Rant, I'm sure.

Yes, Ohio is installing Air-X windmills to charge batteries at many of these sites.

No, they don't often turn let alone charge.  Seems nobody said they should be higher than 8 meters and not in the woods?

Yes, they also have PVs on the same tower.

We took a windmill to an inland lake to test. It did quite well.

The State funded Air-X was not turning on the way to the lake, or the way back.

And it was windy for here, or we would not have gone all the way to the lake!

G-

[alancorey]

And probably in a few years they'll do some expensive study to look at data and decide that because these windmills didn't produce, wind power doesn't work.

One of the best and earliest uses I've seen of RE by a government agency was about 15 years ago at Baxter State Park in Maine, where the 2-way radios in the ranger cabins were powered by PV panels on the cabin roofs.  The park is something like 200,000 acres with dirt roads and no electicity or phones, and these seemed to be working pretty well.  There's a lot of common sense in Maine.

  Alan