The ongoing dry weather

 January was the last month that had anything like normal rain with 66mm (av 77mm)
Drought in spring is quite common but this year it was as dry as any recorded here - but only just.
Quite often there's a sudden change, often about hay time when we want it dry!
But this year there has been little relief though further west and north also in the SW they have had more than here and other eastern areas.

The trouble is ground is so deeply dry that even 10mm doesn't soak in far and soon dries off again.
July so far (22nd) has eased things a bit with about 38mm. July can be one of the wetter months due to often being thundery. 
Grass was very brown but after just one quite wet day when we had 10mm things turned green again but a good deal more would be welcome.

Currently on about `220mm for the year, about half normal, This is very significant deficit and will take a while to recover. 
Private water supplies become a concern later in the summer quite often - for now here at the farm it has been OK though we did have a scare when a mole had somehow pushed soil into the inlet inspection area.
Not much is used until cows come inside at start of November there will surely have been significant rain by then.

Storm Eowyn 25th January 2025

 While this was much worse in Ireland and parts of Scotland we had a gust of 85mph early afternoon and several gusts over 70mph which is usually when damage occurs.
It depends where from though and generally West/NorthWest is not as bad as North or North east such as during Darragh in December.
Took short video but as much as anything this shows how intermittent most severe gusty spells were.

New laptop time again

 I see the last time it was changed was August 2022 so not that long ago compared to the previous Samsung Netbook.
(the weather station) was running on a Toshiba laptop but it was not without problems.
It took about ten minutes if it had to reboot but the worst thing was having no battery power remaining at all if the power went off it just cut off and this often messed up the data.

I'd replaced the Toshiba as my main one with a much faster Dell refurb but that barely has enough capacity on its SSD for general use so decided to get a similar but newer refurb with more space.
So after 2 or 3 weeks getting that fully set up the older Dell was available to be used for WX station and running webcam and security cameras.

It mostly went quite smoothly. There is now about 5GB of stored data which took a while to transfer.
The only thing that needed manually setting up again was webcam uploads.
I wouldn't mind but I only had to make major changes there a couple of months ago but I'd forgotten one or two critical things to turn on and set up so it took a while.
All there now though.

I have a feeling the Dell SSD laptop will use less power running all the time though SSDs are known to just fail totally without warning.
Conventional hard drives are likely to start making funny noises giving you a crucial opportunity to back things up.

Unexpected technical problems

 Though not the most serious thing the web site uses various icons which automatically change if rain starts etc.
Some of these were custom ones I liked and somehow in Weather Display you could change the default ones to your own.
Or you used to be able to I think that might now be a premium feature in fact it might have been premium for a while but mine was happily using custom ones until one day a week ago when we had a brief trip out power cut due to wet snow on lines I think.
When it was all restarted the icons were default set and no amount of backtracking using stored settings file resolved it.
The default ones are OK but seemed crude compared to my nicer ones some I'd made myself.
However I now have quite a nice webcam. It was dirt cheap about £20 and that's uploading anyway so I set that as weather icon.
It doesn't show much at night, though if moon is out there is an image of sorts as it is quite good in low light.
That's on the main page only - if you go to internal pages it shows the 'current weather' icon from default set.

Rain event 26-27th September 2024

 This was a classic North York Moors deluge with Low pressure settling into the southern North Sea introducing a strong NE wind carrying huge amounts of water in from the sea.
As this airmass hits the moors and is forced upwards it rained heavily for many hours.
At Westerdale we got off relatively lightly compared to near the coast.
My gauge counted over 50mm but I discovered due to leaves and other debris it had become blocked I estimate at least 10mm was not counted.

The river here was high but not outrageously high partly as it had been relatively dry for the month to that point.
The most severe flood for many years occurred on 30th October 2000 when at Castleton the Esk peaked at over 3.6metres this year it only reached about 3m briefly at 1am on 28th.

The next day improved considerable but there will still some blustery showers and much lower temperatures.

Further down the Esk fields by the river were severely flooded more so than for several years.
The coastal becks e.g. Loftus and Roxby all went very high too.

Photos me/Harry Scott/castleton facebook/

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.

2018 timelapse

The weather station camera shots condensed into a short timelapse

Drought, heat and storms

Since early May it's been very much on the dry side, with June having only 14mm things were getting stressed by July.

Grass was turning brown rather than regrowing from hay and silage cuts, and some spring water supplies were getting precarious.
As July went on thundery spells began to feature, with 34mm on the 16th and 23mm on the 27th.
By month end the total has got close to the normal 77mm.

 Here's a (rather long) video of the dramatic lightning on the evening of the 27th.
This moved on over Teesside giving them a spectacular display too.
This storm gave about 14mm but was never especially torrential.

 

Replacing VP2 anemometer bearings

Fow a while it has become apparent that when the wind is light, the wind cups stop spinning far too readily. This is a common issue caused by the tiny bearings - which can be replaced rather than change the whole unit. I bought a set (two) from an ebay seller and they arrived several weeks ago but only just got round to installing. Once on the ground the unit can be opened using just a small hexagonal/allen key. I already had a suitable one but it is very small, no idea the exact size. I feared the studs might be seized but it opened easily enough, I think they are stainless. The cups are completely separate from the Vane, which you do not need to open but it won't hurt, and makes it easier to handle with it taken off. You need to open the central area by taking out the larger screw on the stem too. Inside a magnet spins in the central section. on the bottom a small circlip is all that stops the shaft and attached magnet sliding upwards and out. The bearings have a small flange and can be wiggled out with a small screwdriver or similar. Replacements just press in. The major risk is losing the tiny circlip, I guess a bit of wire might do to replace it. Tweezers are useful to position it for delicate replacement. Once re-installed lower speeds are being recorded much better. There was an obvious roughness in the old bearings as you spun it, however a possible temporary improvement might be made by opening it up and squirting with WD40 or similar. I was a little surprised they were somewhat rusty - but it isn't exactly sealed inside, so much as free draining. If water gets in it *should* drip out. I may be wrong but the upper section with vane does not appear to have a bearing, and might also benefit from slight lubrication. In any case it seems to be moving freely on mine, which is only about 5 years old having been replaced previously.

Beast Blizzard

This started rather modestly but by 28th February conditions were severe with daytime highs about -3C compounded by high winds from the east and frequent snow showers.
During the showers conditions were hellish at times, but probably little more than 6 inches of snow has fallen so far.

Forecasts suggest more normal cold weather returns by the weekend with temperatures creeping above freezing, but very much on the cold side until perhaps mid-March.

Slo-Mo Snow

There's been no shortage of days with snow falling this winter,  but no great amounts so far.
This was a couple of weeks ago but another more serious and colder spell is underway to end the month.

speed is reduced to 25% in this (Sony RX100 video)

December whoops

Picture from Twitter/Paddy Chamber BATA wagon trying to descend icy Chimney Bank at Rosedale. South of the moors roads were dry, but a snow shower had let an icy cover over the higher parts further north. It would help if water wasn't allowed to stream down the bank - but not a place to take a big truck, risky evenin good conditions (1 in 3 slope)

Sudden snowy spell 30th November

This was quite well forecast but with nothing at first light it seemed unlikely it would get like this within a few minutes. Heavy showers continued most of the day with temperatures barely getting above freezing.

Sparrow Selfie

The weather webcam takes a still if it records movement.

Often it's flies in the window and once before it caught a barn owl  - but not as close as this.

Possibly after spiders round the window frame.