Seeing as how it's a windy, cool Labor Day weekend, what better time for me to switch the Hood River Weather site from displaying "heat index" to displaying "wind chill". It just feels right. And chillier...
Plus, I do this every year in September. Heat index from June through August, and wind chill the rest of the time. One of life's little traditions. Happy Labor Day to y'all.
On the Hood River Weather site, just under the current temperature, is something called "heat index", otherwise known as the "feels like" temperature. I put it there in the summer in place of "wind chill", which obviously is more of a cooler weather thing.
But, generally speaking, our heat index has been totally unimpressive. It always shows either the current temperature or lower. Some heat index THAT is...
Until the past two days...
A lingering heat wave combined with moisture streaming up from the Southwest has made for hot humid afternoons. Pretty unusual for Hood River. And, the heat index has actually been higher than the actual temperature!! Yes!!
At one point today, the outside temperature was 86, and the humidity was 50%, making for a heat index "feels like" temperature of 89.
Now, people who live in more humid areas of the world would laugh their butts off at this small Hood River heat index. In Florida, for example, try 95 degrees at 75% humidity for a heat index of 110 degrees.
It turns out that, in Hood River, the heat index hardly ever applies. It only takes effect at temperatures of 80 degrees or higher with a relative humidity of 40% or higher. These combined conditions, thankfully, are quite rare here.
OK, I know, 12 days is a bit long between blog posts, but I have excuses. Lots of 'em. I'll blame it mostly on a vacation spent visiting relatives and seeing incredible scenery in beautiful Southern Utah. Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks were awesome. Ancient sea beds thrust up over millions of years and partially eroded by wind and rain and ice. Quite excellent at putting our brief mortal lives into a much longer term perspective.
During my vacation, I apparently missed out on: a 4 day heat wave here, a forest fire near Mt Adams, and a wildfire in The Dalles. But I did return in time for epic winds and cooler temperatures. I'm hoping warmer summer temperatures will return sooner than later.
Sorry about the missing Hood River Weather site data today from 06:30 to 16:00 . Every now and again, my computer locks up, and if I'm away at work at the time, and can't reboot, well... missing data...
4:00 pm Sunday afternoon. It's still relatively warm outside at 37 degrees, but a very cold air mass from the northeast is coming our way this evening. This will be our first arctic breakout of the winter, but not at all unusual for January. Expect low temperatures over the next 4 days in the mid teens and maybe lower. In these type of events, we'll have east winds of 5 to 10 mph while Portland on the other end of the Gorge will have 50+ mph east winds. Brrrrr!
However, no chance of breaking any local all time cold records this week, as low temperatures in 1930 at this time in January were in the -15 to -20 range.
The Hood River Weather poll this week attempts to be topical with the question "how do you heat your home?" We have a natural gas furnace, supplemented occasionally with a wood stove. I've lived in 6 different houses here since 1976, and this combination of heating along with a pretty tight house is the best ever. Still, winter heating bills just keep climbing. It doesn't seem to matter that we use the same or fewer therms or KW hours, since the cost per unit continues to climb.
Oh, by the way, I replaced the outside temperature sensor late last week, and the occasional "extremely high temperature" reading problem hasn't reoccurred. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Me neither. But that's what our wireless outside temperature sensor is currently indicating. So, after calling the Davis Vantage Pro weather station support folks, their verdict is that the sensor has failed, and for a mere $70 they will be happy to send me a replacement.
Unfortunately, it won't be here until next Tuesday. And then, depending on my ability to install the new sensor in the driving rain or snow or sub zero temperatures, not to mention that I am working during most of the daylight hours, I might have it functioning by next Wednesday. Or Thursday. Maybe.
Until then, you can view other local area weather stations' current temperature data here.
In the past few days, the WeatherUnderground map on the Hood River Weather site has dramatically increased the number of weather stations displayed, mostly by adding Agrimet, ODOT, and other government weather sites.
This is a major improvement in local weather data. The more data points, the better. And it doesn't bother me in the least that our home weather station data circle is now pretty much totally covered up with other stations' circles. Nope, doesn't bother me a bit. The more the merrier. *sniff*
Wow, 2 weeks since I last posted here. Time flies. I will try to post more often, if for no other reason than to exercise my writing muscles.
Typical Fall weather continues (whether I post about it or not). The autumn colors along I84 (my daily commute to The Dalles) are still spectacular but will pretty much be gone by Thanksgiving. The seasons move forward, and it's all good...
Speaking of Fall colors, the Hood River Weather site top banner currently has a "Colorful Leaf" motif. It's fairly easy to change the Flash banner graphics, and I'm wondering if site visitors prefer a top banner that changes occasionally, or one that always stays the same. I will probably continue to change it every now and again, but I am interested in your opinions.
2 million website "views" served, that is. Sometime this weekend the Hood River Weather site passed that particular cybermark. It has taken 9 years to reach 2 million views; the site currently gets about 1500 views daily, which would bring the next million views in about 2 years. Sooner if you tell 10 of your friends about the site...
I was thinking of having some sort of celebration, perhaps giving away 2 million dollars to the 2 millionth site viewer. But then, people would come to expect that sort of thing every time we hit another million mark. So I decided to pretty much ignore it. Except for this blog post.
Rain overnight! 0.13 inches at our house, enough to settle the summer dust and not have to water for a day or so. More typical summer weather returns this coming week (we can only hope).
"It" being Hood River, that is. We're out of town for a week visiting friends and relatives in California. I don't have handy access to a high speed internet connection, so the web poll might not be changed until Wednesday Aug 1 or later. Thankfully, the Hood River Weather web site seems to be holding up ok on auto-pilot (so far).
And now, back to the vacation...
Real-time weather station information on the Hood River Weather site will be intermittant this evening as I re-install the station software. Hopefully this will eliminate the occasional temperature and rainfall spikes that have been occuring for the past few weeks.
Some historical graphs will be zeroed out initially, so it will take a while for the data to fill back in. Thanks for your patience.
I finally broke down this weekend and did a clean reinstall of Windows XP on the desktop computer (the one that also runs the weather station software). Seems like Windows machines inevitably slow down over time, and this machine was getting intolerably slow.
So, after backing up data, reformatting, reinstalling XP, and reinstalling all the programs, we're back in business. Except that now the weather station software is introducing these occasional weird spiky things into the data. I'm gonna watch this for a day or so and if it doesn't improve on it's own I'll resort to stronger measures.
I can't help but wonder if Apple computers slow down over time and need to have the operating system re-installed?
The Hood River Weather site is back after 3 frustrating days trying to get the web space restored. To make a long story short, I called my web hosting company Saturday to report that whereas they thought I had reached my web space quota of 20 MB, I could only see about 2 MB of files in there. So, they suggested, what the heck, let's just delete the whole webspace and then I could simply re-upload the files to a newly created space. Sounded really simple in theory. 72 hours later, lots of emails back and forth, and... the site returns.
Anyway, the far more important thing that has returned today is "Spring". The vernal equinox (more or less equal day and night) officially arrived at 5:07 pm, and not a moment too soon.
The Hood River Weather site is currently off line for anywhere from several hours to a day or so. Technical difficulties at the company that hosts the site should be cleared up by Monday or sooner. Sorry about the downtime.
Meanwhile, our weather station is still working, and you can access the station's current (and historical) data at Weather Underground.
A very nice day indeed. Sunny and 57 degrees, only 4 degrees away from the record high of 61 degrees in 1971. I had the day off from work, so I spent some time outside working on house and garden things. Spring is coming. Life is good.
The web poll this week is regarding the Hood River Weather site, and your thoughts on the layout. I've thought for a while that it is perhaps becoming a little stale, outdated, and definitely not "Web 2.0" style. But, on the other hand, so what. I still like the concept of having all the weather info on one page. Scrolling is good exercise (or so I rationalize).
I've also considered having two sites, one the current style, one a more up to date style. Viewers could choose between the two. But, that would involve some time and work on my part, not to mention venturing into web site design areas that I am clueless about. So, I'm curious as to what you like about the site, and what you don't.
We are slowly warming out of the deep freeze (the high temp Wednesday reached 32!). Pretty slippery stuff outside as we get daytime melting and re-freezing of surfaces at night.
No one's asked, but if they had, here's how to subscribe to this (or any other) blog or news feed. For those of you familiar with RSS and news readers, you already know this stuff. For others, here's how it works:
Most of us have favorite web sites which we visit on a regular basis, to see if new content has been added. This can be quite time consuming. Now, using free "news feed readers", this search can be automated, and new content on web sites or blogs can be delivered to the user in a condensed form, either through email services (such as FeedBlitz), or web based services such as Google Reader.
The latest versions of web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox make it easy to add a web site to the list of sites you would like to monitor. If you are using Firefox, look for this icon 
in the address bar of the site you are on. If it's there, just click on it, choose the reader that you want to use, and you're subscribed.
In Internet Explorer 7, look for the same icon in the toolbars.
Sometimes sites will have the RSS or XML symbol within the web page, and it works the same way.
There are dozens of reader programs; the choices can be confusing. I have tried several and have settled in on the free Google Reader. Your mileage may vary. Check here for a list of other news readers. Choose a reader, spend a little time figuring out how it works, and I think you'll like the result.
And now, back to the weather. It's still winter, and it's still cold.
