Summer just past

 It has been a hot summer with some records broken of course.
Here the highest temperature reached was 37.3C on the 19th.
This was quite a jump on previous record of about 32C!
It was only one day though and honestly don't quite understand why such a huge fuss was made about 'dangers' since high 30s temperatures are common enough in southern Europe where people apparently enjoy it on holiday.
The cause was a pocket of very hot air direct from North Africa and it was less moderated since France in particular was already hotter and drier than normal.

A more significant issue is how dry it has been - building on a dry winter, every month has been below average with only February anywhere near normal.
By mid September we had still had less than 250mm well below half normal.
The result has been scorched up grassland though occasional showers meant it didn't really get as brown as 1976 and some areas to the south of the moors and further west were much less scorched than here towards the coast.

September has gradually built up a more respectable total of about 66mm in fact slightly above normal and the immediate worry of failing water supplies has receded but grass growth can't make up for several weeks when there was almost none.

Some problems with data.

 At the end of August we had a thunderstorm and not quite sure why but when I shut everything down to pull the plug until lightning had passed the final day seemed to get messed up and that also messed up the whole month - though only the rain total was significantly affected.
It seemed like having a few entries missing at the end made it an incomplete or invalid total so it just indicated 0.0mm when it should have been about 12.8mm I think (still very low!).

I downloaded a more recent version of the software in the hope it would behave differently but it still calculated the rain total as zero.

I decided to leave it on the newer software as all seemed OK otherwise.
Month ends are often when issues arise and inexplicably at the very last day of September it *lost* the first six days completely.
The data does back up to server but overwrites at 6am daily so the backup was also overwritten.

Rainfall was hardly affected by that but the September mean temp was about 1C lower than it should be since the first week was quite hot.

There was no obvious reason this happened as the power had not gone out so suspicion falls on the new software since the old version never 'lost' several days irretrievably so far as I know.
So I have put it back on older version but there is still no easy way to retrieve the lost days though they are shown in wunderground page.
In teh past you could download a .csv from there and convert it then replace missing data here but they have hidden or removed that option now.

No big deal but somebody might notice discrepancies.
I can correct those figures manually but not much point doing it until year end as it will overwrite with wrong data at each month end until January starts.

Not quite weather but ...

 On the 15th of January 2022 a huge explosive eruption occurred at Tonga in the Pacific Ocean - about 10,000 miles away.
At about 7pm weather stations in the UK measured a sharp blip in atmospheric pressure which was the shockwave passing over several hours later.

Remarkable enough, but then about 2am on the 16th there was a further similar blip - this is thought to have been the same event having travelled even further the other way around the globe.

The explosion was heard in Alaska some 6000 miles away but it seems very unlikely a human would detect the shockwave by the  time it reached the UK.
A secondary concern could be what if the large amounts of ejected ash affect the weather.
This has happened before notably Mt St Helens and Pinutobo lowered global temperatures significantly for 2 or 3 years. Further back Krakatoa in Indonesia caused very cool summers and cold snowy winters across the Northern Hemisphere.
This does not necessarily mean bad weather or even cold weather for any location as less energy in the system might actually reduce storm activity for example.

In this case the volcano is in the southern hemisphere so would take many weeks/months for ash to reach northern latitudes. In reality it probably won't have any effect unless it goes on for a long time but ash may eventually be detectable all over the globe.

The samsung NC10 netbook

 In about 2010 I'd bought one of these on XP, at that time tablets weren't really a thing but I wanted something small to use when didn't need desktop upstairs.
Anyway it proved a bit too small on the keyboard especially so got set up with weather station duties and later security IP cams too.
It has run practically continuously ever since that's a good 12 years.

A couple of years ago it started making a squealing noise but it was probably just the fan as when stopped and blown out it was OK again.
The last couple of days it started making a worrying scratchy noise a bit like a blue bottle was stuck inside!
That seemed much more worrying and there was an odd period where it was messing up data received from the VP2 for example in August it suddenly showed 0.0C on the last day (will be corrected shortly).

Anyway I replaced my main laptop a few months ago as the older Toshiba one was having a lot of problems with keys sticking and had got very slow.
So I reset that old one (it's still quite slow!) and got everything transferred over late yesterday.
It was easier than anticipated but took quite a while - just transferring the data from the Samsung to a flashdrive took nearly two hours as it's quite slow USB2.0 and the folder is now getting on for 4GB

Most likely the laptop won't last ten years but it is quiet again and running nice and cool so far.

Lashing wind and rain from Storm Ciara squall line

This gave over 5mm in less than 5 minutes - on top of 20mm since midnight however that was the end of the serious rain. There had been a gust to 70mph shortly after midnight and this squall peaked at about 57mph

New VP2 ISS

My VP2 was bought used from ebay about 2012 and so must be at least 10 years old - the whole unit is showing it's age with grey sun damaged plastics and lichen growth hard to keep at bay.

Only the rain gauge is original so it's a bit like the warehouse man's broom in a way!
Even the main board was replaced about 5 years ago.

I noticed the main unit without console is not unduly expensive especially since VAT an be reclaimed as the unit is invaluable for the farm at times.
The replaced sensors can be kept as spares indeed the whole thing could be swapped back if an issue arises.

As noted in post below I was taken aback that the new one reads 0.5C lower which seems to be because the T/H sensor replaced last October should have had an offset applied due to revised design.
Before about 25th October readings were correct except for humidity which was why it was replaced.

VP2 Temperature offset not applied

It has come to light that the sensor I replaced late October 2019 requires a -0.5C offset due to different design - this is significant and if corrected there would have been more air frosts recorded for example.
Here's the info:
https://www.manula.com/manuals/pws/davis-kb/1/en/topic/temperature-humidity-general

The previous one was installed about 2014 and was reading correctly.
the newer design is reckoned to be more accurate.
Luckily that's only two months with *wrong* readings and there's no easy way to correct that so will let it go.