On 7/2/19 we were in the middle of a massive microburst. My SKY didn’t record the peak wind gust. We did lose power, but the hub is on a battery backup. As you can see it stayed online for 10 mins after the event. Is this because of the reporting interval I have it set at? Station 2277.
See the video here and look at 5:01:08PM https://www.facebook.com/robert.vallone/videos/10219453066900244/
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That’s a good one…how much rain+wind do you think you got ?
I also personally watched the wind nearly blow down some trees in my back yard during a storm last week, but the AIR reported only a 20 MPH gust. My visual estimate was 40+. I have power saving mode turned off.
My estimate was at least 50mph. Anyone from Weatherflow care to respond?
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Maybe @dsj can have a look at your station’s data.
Can you provide a photo of you installation environment ?
Stay patient, it’s weekend. A WF team member will have a look on Monday, I’m shure.
Did you read the topics on water drops on the sensors here ?
For those not in the USA, it is a 4-day holiday weekend here for most businesses.
For those inside the USA, there is a rather loud NASCAR race (and pre-race practices) talking place all weekend essentially outside the WF main office’s windows…
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Wow, nice little storm! Sorry for the late response, @pagerman. I actually saw your post on Friday (not all of us took a four-day weekend, @vreihen !) and hoped to have a look at your data the same day but haven’t had a chance yet. We’ll do that shortly and let you know what the data says.
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Can you provide a little info on where your SKY is mounted? Do you have any photos?
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Looks like your sky mount is still partially blocked by your roof. Even the smallest amount of blocking can decrease your wind fetch.
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Thanks for the photo! We’ve taken a look at your debug data for the high wind event and nothing in the data itself looks out of the ordinary - no flags or oddities in there. That is, it appears the SKY was accurately recording the winds it experienced.
As for why it didn’t record those high gusts, our best guess is that your SKY was in the “lee” of your house. It looks like your photo is facing East (garage facing West) which means your SKY is mounted on the south side of your house. Assuming that’s correct, and given that the strong winds were northerly, your SKY was downwind of your house during those strong gusts. And since your SKY is well below the peak of your roof, the winds experienced at that point were likely not representative of the winds over open space (above your trees, for example). Furthermore, the winds seen in your video may have actually been greater than what they were in open space. They were likely accelerated by the funneling effect, created by the trees and houses, as it moved down your street.
Note, this is a VERY common issue for all home weather stations. It’s difficult to find a mounting point where you have clean wind fetch in all directions. That’s okay though!
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Thanks! Makes complete sense now. I’m moving, and I’ll be able to get it to the peak of the new roof!
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Hey all looking for some insight. I have my sky about 30 feet in the air …in today’s storm I would think that winds were 20 to 30 maybe even 35 mph. Attached is a video and pic…
but it doesn’t seem like my sky picks up high gusts or even the wind average…seems low …
Thanks for the report, Chad. Please check the above discussion - siting of an anemometer for measuring “open air” wind speeds (the winds outside any obstructions) can be tricky in residential locations. Is it possible your SKY was downwind of your roof during that storm?
No…interference. It was NW wind, but outside of that…zero structure interference. The view you are looking at is north and northwest.
The tree is about 50 feet away…
Think of the wind over the land like water down a rocky stream… there will be eddies and slow currents, faster areas, even areas where the wind will go in the opposite direction.
50’ from that tree is not a clear fetch.
Having it 4’ above the wall is not good either… the wind will “run up” the wall and cause strange readings…
My 2 cents.
–Sam
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And further more…
Where you have your SKY, when the wind comes from the West, it is going to ‘fall’ off that tree toward the ground… where it will ‘meet’ the wind coming around the sides of the tree. That will cause turbulence and slow the windstream down.
Then, it makes it’s way (erratically) to the wall and gets pushed up the wall by the wind coming in behind it… and then… meeting the upper level winds (which are disturbed by the lower level winds ‘falling’ away)… and the two then have to ‘remerge’ back to a single stream… which is slow and confused…
It’s not always feasible to do so, but if you could raise your SKY up 20’ or so you’d see better readings.
–Sam
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Ok…so for all of us in this particular situation, it’s not the “height” of the sky, it’s the height away from “objects”. Essentially we can install the sky anywhere as long as we have “clear air”. Raising it 20’ is doable but can mountain
Regarding the need to mount your SKY way up on the roof… actually, it is not imperative that users mount their SKY up in some scary or HOA non-compliant location. Sure, if you can access a location free of physical obstructions that impact the wind fetch you will get cleaner wind readings. And yes, there are meteorological standards for professional installation sites for government networks. But, let’s be real here, this is your home, your data, your choice to mount your SKY wherever you feel comfortable.
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Hi @TheChad, we took a look at your data just to make sure there were no indications of any hardware issue, and there do not appear to be. I did just want to confirm a few items:
- is this for station 4817 (Southend)?
- is this for the storm between ~6 to 7 pm EDT August 1?
- If the above 2 are correct, then the SKY did record gusts to 23 mph in that period (see image below)…are those the values that seem too low?
Thanks!
-Tony
WeatherFlow Staff
