It’s been a winter. Last year I think we had to snowblow 3 times.
This is #8. At least 3 ice storms, snowstorm, melt, snowstorm, melt, etc.etc.
We had +7C just a few days ago then 25cm of snow as of yesterday.. then it plunged to -24C this morning.
This is a time lapse I made with my smartphone.. until it shut down because it was too cold!
*update*
The next day had another 5cm of snow.. not enough for the snowblower so out came the shovel.
We have a Hardware AcuRite 06004 weather station installed on 2019 November 27th.
There is space for batteries in the back but they never kept it going during power outages.. this year we have had 6 or more.
Each time the weather station goes down, data capture stops, etc. It got so frustrating that Something Had To Be Done.
The indoor receiver buttons have also mostly failed and it is a horribly time consuming event to reprogram it to the correct units, date, time, usb data transfer, etc.
A complete computer Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) cost starts at $200+. So instead we have taken a small MFLASH 5000mAh Rubberized Power Bank (MFPWR0501PLBLKR) approx $11 and put it inline from the wall power to the raspberry pi weewx data logger and also to the weather station receiver.
It is functioning now as a mini UPS and so far so good… now we just have to wait for the next power outage 🙂
From our weather station stats.
This is the 6th heat wave (our definition of more than one day at 30C or above), this summer and the current one will be continuing for another two days.
MONTHLY CLIMATOLOGICAL SUMMARY for Aug 2025
NAME: SCGO-yarker-ontario-canada
ELEV: 150 meters LAT: 44-22.20 N LONG: 076-46.80 W
TEMPERATURE (C), RAIN (cm), WIND SPEED (km/h)
HEAT COOL AVG
MEAN DEG DEG WIND DOM
DAY TEMP HIGH TIME LOW TIME DAYS DAYS RAIN SPEED HIGH TIME DIR
—————————————————————————————
01 16.5 26.5 18:03 6.5 05:41 1.8 0.0 0.00 3.0 18.4 11:37 25
02 18.4 29.7 16:00 4.4 05:55 0.0 0.1 0.00 2.8 20.0 17:16 228
03 20.2 29.8 14:51 9.9 05:32 0.0 1.8 0.00 2.5 15.9 12:57 221
04 20.4 31.1 15:22 9.8 05:51 0.0 2.1 0.10 1.6 13.4 18:55 32
05 20.7 29.6 15:51 12.6 05:05 0.0 2.3 0.00 3.5 17.6 15:20 36
06 21.9 31.9 15:17 11.6 03:10 0.0 3.6 0.00 2.6 19.2 15:01 37
07 22.7 30.2 13:37 15.3 04:13 0.0 4.4 0.00 2.2 14.2 15:23 206
08 23.4 31.0 13:49 16.0 23:56 0.0 5.0 0.00 2.9 18.4 15:33 205
09 24.1 33.0 18:11 15.5 01:45 0.0 5.8 0.00 3.0 19.2 15:26 205
10 25.6 34.0 15:06 16.7 05:56 0.0 7.3 0.00 2.7 20.0 14:49 201
The last significant rain was 30 days ago and it was 9mm.
Everything is hot and dry. Total fire bans have been in place for a week now and will continue most likely for the remainder of the month.
In comparison to last august to date
MONTHLY CLIMATOLOGICAL SUMMARY for Aug 2024
NAME: SCGO-yarker-ontario-canada
ELEV: 150 meters LAT: 44-22.20 N LONG: 076-46.80 W
TEMPERATURE (C), RAIN (cm), WIND SPEED (km/h)
HEAT COOL AVG
MEAN DEG DEG WIND DOM
DAY TEMP HIGH TIME LOW TIME DAYS DAYS RAIN SPEED HIGH TIME DIR
—————————————————————————————
01 24.9 32.7 14:04 17.3 05:25 0.0 6.6 0.00 1.7 13.4 14:54 235
02 24.3 30.3 13:30 17.7 05:55 0.0 6.0 0.00 0.8 9.3 11:31 221
03 24.7 30.2 11:08 20.0 23:28 0.0 6.3 0.00 3.0 15.1 13:49 218
04 25.8 32.5 15:22 18.0 06:15 0.0 7.4 0.00 2.8 19.2 18:47 251
05 19.9 25.6 18:08 16.3 23:59 0.0 1.6 0.61 2.5 17.6 19:22 11
06 17.8 22.8 12:49 10.7 23:50 0.5 0.0 0.00 4.1 15.1 08:08 33
07 17.4 26.1 16:20 8.1 04:14 1.0 0.0 0.00 3.2 16.7 11:38 34
08 17.8 25.1 11:15 9.5 04:10 0.5 0.0 0.03 3.6 18.4 11:17 179
09 21.5 25.6 18:45 17.3 23:57 0.0 3.1 3.89 3.6 15.1 00:26 217
10 19.5 25.9 13:34 12.2 06:26 0.0 1.1 0.00 5.4 27.5 18:01 228
Happy Canada Day! Three tornado warnings and a severe thunderstorm warning… and a severe thunderstorm!
No hail, just a lot of wind.
Two video recordings have been compressed. The first is out the back looking east
Be warned.. a lot tornado warning sound pops up in the middle!
The one out the front shows the winds better.
Weather station
This displays the number of nonfrost growing days in any given season.
This year light frost growing days were a little above (147 days) average (143 days), while this years heavy frost growing days (155 days) were below average (164 days).
A formatted PDF is available:
frostgrowanalysis 2003-2022
StarlightCascade Gardens & Observatory Weather Station
Yarker Ontario Canada
LIGHT FROST (-1C) HEAVY FROST (-3C)
Year #days #weeks Year #days #weeks
2003 Apr30-Oct23 176 25 2003 Apr24-Nov08 198 28
2004 May08-Oct11 156 22 2004 Apr16-Nov03 201 29
2005 May17-Oct20 156 22 2005 Mar13-Oct21 222 32
2006 no data no data 2006 no data no data
2007 May18-Oct12 147 21 2007 May13-Oct13 153 22
2008 May06-Oct06 154 22 2008 Apr30-Oct07 160 23
2009 May13-Sep19 129 18 2009 Apr17-Oct12 179 26
2010 Jun13-Oct10 119 17 2010 Jun11-Nov01 143 20
2011 Apr22-Sep17 149 21 2011 Apr22-Oct06 167 24
2012 Apr30-Oct08 162 23 2012 Apr30-Oct12 165 24
2013 May14-Sep16 125 18 2013 May14-Oct29 168 24
2014 May18-Sep19 124 18 2014 Apr25-Sep19 147 21
2015 May23-Oct10 140 20 2015 May23-Oct17 147 21
2016 May18-Sep25 130 19 2016 May10-Sep25 138 20
2017 May11-Oct01 143 20 2017 May10-Oct17 160 23
2018 May12-Oct05 146 21 2018 Apr23-Oct14 174 25
2019 Apr29-Oct05 159 23 2019 Apr29-Oct05 159 23
2020 Jun01-Sep15 107 15 2020 May14-Sep19 128 18
2021 May31-Oct19 141 20 2021 May30-Oct22 145 21
2022 May05-Oct03 147 21 2022 May01-Oct03 155 22
min 107 15 min 128 18
average 143 20 average 164 23
median 146 21 median 160 23
max 176 25 max 222 32
stddev 17 2 stddev 23 3
Last Updated 2022October07
All data comes from our weather station located just outside Yarker Ontario Canada
http://starlightcascade.ca/weather/
https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=IONTARIO51
https://www.pwsweather.com/obs/YARKER1.html
On July 18th our Acurite Pro (model 06004) (2019 November 27) weather station receiver went a little crazy. The data display continued fine but the lower display section started showing graphical patterns and would not respond to any button press.
We cycled the power, removed wall power and battery power, reset the unit, all several times. The unit powers back up in default imperial measurement mode, but again, no buttons can configure the units, date, time or USB mode for data transmission. New receiver units are a little pricey at this time so our weather station will stay offline for some time.
And this is today… still in Spring, Summer Solstice still 5 days away…
Severe Thunderstorms.. ok that’s one thing… Tornados? That is another!
Batten down the hatches (we don’t actually have hatches)
Bring in the cats
Prep the emergency gear: water-lights-food-generator
Go outside and see what happens!
A little later:
Today’s weather station temperature plot. It’s been so cold at times the station data is not received… we think it might be the cold affecting the batteries.. but then why does it happen when it is relatively warmer?
It’s been a colder and snowier winter than last year… and that got us to thinking… how cold has it been? Looking through the weather station logs came up with this summary:
2021-2022 winter season how many nights at -30C or below: five
2022 Jan 26 -34.6
2022 Jan 24 -33.0
2022 Jan 22 -33.5
2022 Jan 21 -34.9
2022 Jan 20 -32.1
2020-2021 winter season nights at -30C or below: none
2019-2020 winter season nights at -30C or below: none
2018-2019 winter season nights at -30C or below: one
2019 Jan 22 -31.7
2017-2018 winter season nights at -30C or below: eight
2018 Jan 01 -35.1
2018 Jan 02 -30.2
2018 Jan 06 -30.3
2018 Jan 07 -34.1
2018 Jan 14 -30.4
2017 Dec 31 -31.9
2017 Dec 29 -31.7
2017 Dec 27 -31.6
2016-2017 winter season nights at -30C or below: none
2015-2016 winter season nights at -30C or below: two
2016 Feb 14 -34.8
2016 Feb 13 -30.6
An interim post… weather has been nicer and warmer than average over the last two weeks, but now that has passed and we are back to below average temperatures and cloud and rain.
A lot of yard work was completed, all flower beds raked, all veg beds pretty much prepped for planting.. and now we wait for the weather to clear and the provincial stay-at-home order to expire on or about 2021 May 6th.
The mail and amazon still work, so it was very easy to order a 480GB SSD drive ($66Can) to upgrade my personal laptop. It has a 120GB SSD drive and has been getting close to being full.
The day it arrived, a Kingston A400, it went into a USB3 external case, plugged into the USB3 port of the laptop, and the laptop was rebooted from a CDROM of Clonezilla. 15 minutes later the internal drive had been cloned to the external drive. 5 minutes after that, the laptop had been opened, the 120GB drive removed, the 480GB drive installed, and the laptop put back together and booted…
And it worked!
It is always pleasant to have technology work the way it is supposed to, and is expected to.
The new drive still had the original partition size of approx 100GB but windows could not expand it (my pc, manage, storage space, expand) because the recovery partition was at the end of the C: partition.
So the machine was rebooted with the CDROM of GParted. The recovery partition was moved to the end of the drive and the machine rebooted into windows 10 again.
Windows was then able to expand the 100GB partition to use the full space available.
GParted was able to expand the partition as well, but in this case we wanted to see if Windows would behave as well.
Two great utilities that everyone should have, who deal with storage devices.
Clonezilla and Gparted
We maintain and publish date and growing season information based on the first and last light frosts (-1C) and the first and last heavy frost (-3C) of each season.
This is the latest update showing the 2018 growing season.
It was much shorter than average this year due to late light frosts into June, only the 2nd time in our recorded history, and early light frosts in September.
The same for the heavy plant killing frosts, both later in the spring and earlier in the fall, than the avergage.
StarlightCascade Gardens & Observatory Weather Station Yarker Ontario Canada LIGHT FROST (-1C) HEAVY FROST (-3C) Year #days #weeks Year #days #weeks 2003 Apr30-Oct23 176 25 2003 Apr24-Nov08 198 28 2004 May08-Oct11 156 22 2004 Apr16-Nov03 201 29 2005 May17-Oct20 156 22 2005 Mar13-Oct21 222 32 2006 no data no data 2006 no data no data 2007 May18-Oct12 147 21 2007 May13-Oct13 153 22 2008 May06-Oct06 154 22 2008 Apr30-Oct07 160 23 2009 May13-Sep19 129 18 2009 Apr17-Oct12 179 26 2010 Jun13-Oct10 119 17 2010 Jun11-Nov01 143 20 2011 Apr22-Sep17 149 21 2011 Apr22-Oct06 167 24 2012 Apr30-Oct08 162 23 2012 Apr30-Oct12 165 24 2013 May14-Sep16 125 18 2013 May14-Oct29 168 24 2014 May18-Sep19 124 18 2014 Apr25-Sep19 147 21 2015 May23-Oct10 140 20 2015 May23-Oct17 147 21 2016 May18-Sep25 130 19 2016 May10-Sep25 138 20 2017 May11-Oct01 143 20 2017 May10-Oct17 160 23 2018 May12-Oct05 146 21 2018 Apr23-Oct14 174 25 2019 Apr29-Oct05 159 23 2019 Apr29-Oct05 159 23 2020 Jun01-Sep15 107 15 2020 May14-Sep19 128 18 min 107 15 min 128 18 average 142 20 average 165 24 median 146 21 median 160 23 max 176 25 max 222 32 stddev 18 3 stddev 24 4
Just thinking back to the 2017 August 21st eclipse in Wyoming and could not find the air temperature data we took… so here it is, maybe again:
The new allsky1 version3 camera system. The camera is a ZWO ASI 120MC (not cooled) with a 2.1mm lens giving approx a 150 degree field of view.
The housing was upgraded from 9″ to 12″ tall as the space inside was a little tight.
The 110VAC was removed and replaced with two power lines, a 5VDC for the raspberry pi and asi120mc camera, and a variable 6-12VDC for the 10 ohm 10 watt heating element in the dome.
Mounted on an angle to the north as the lens is not horizon to horizon.. and we want to bias it towards the north. Mainly for aurora…
**Updated 2020 Feb 17
Turns out that North is Up requires the camera in an orientation where the usb port is up. So it was the wrong way around the last night or two and was rotated 180deg today.
Looks like frost is still forming.. the variable power adapter is quite old and was a little bit flaky when measuring before the install.. perhaps it is not working at all?
Still getting hot pixels… will wait a few days and try the dark frame again as well.
**Updated 2020 Feb 19
Not a bad night… mostly cloud but some clear skies and stars. All night runs about 18 seconds… may see about dropping the frame rate to extend that a little more.
No condensation or frost overnight. Outdoor temp was about -3C at 5am, so not much of a test for frost. Tonight is forecast to be -14C.. a better test.
** Updated 2020 Feb 27
A new variable power supply ($20) was ordered received and installed on Feb 25th. It was initially set to 4.5vdc and the sensors temp soared to 20C overnight with +2C air temp. Feb 26th it was turned down to 3vdc, going from 2.03W to 0.9W. The sensor temp has now not risen above 10C in warm weather. Tonight air temp goes down to -8C
The last couple of years, on what used to be the premier free weather data aggregating server, has gone to hell. Lost accounts, lost configurations, deleting features then adding them in again. Wow.
Today we noted that our station is “offline” and has been since midngiht 2020 January 28. Like heck it is offline. The weatherpi system has been up for 54 days now, reporting to the Weather Underground and PWS and generating its own weewx pages.
doing a quick search reveals no customer response to many many customer notes:
2020-02-03 08:41:20
@DHTheWeatherNut @Eweather13 @VermonsterWx @crankywxguy @TimNBCBoston @EdValleeWx @WesternMEwx Sweet, thx!! Any issues with data getting lost due to issues with Wunderground network data loss like Mike @WesternMEwx has experienced?
2020-02-02 23:09:19
@Armato1 @wunderground What’s up with my weather station being offline for days now ? Seems many others are having issues as well.
2020-02-02 01:29:17
@loparite @wunderground why are the personal weather stations showing as offline when they’re not? It’s been radio silence from you guys as to what’s going on!
2020-02-01 07:53:55
@The_Weatherman2 @wunderground @wunderground Looks like it’s working on the normal app but not on WunderStation
2020-01-31 19:28:28
@The_Weatherman2 Hey @wunderground, 20+ weather stations I follow on WunderStation haven’t been reporting recently, and they all stopped around 4 pm Wednesday. I know it’s not a weather station error because my personal station is working fine. Is there a server error? Anyone know what’s up??
It’s been over a week now since the new weather station (Acurite Pro model 06004) went operational in the back gardens. There have been signal dropouts and there has been cold temperatures (-20C), so we assumed it was the cold weather affecting the 4AA alkaline batteries powering the transmitter.
They were replaced 3 days ago with 4AA lithium batteries, rated for -40C.
And we still had signal dropouts!
So last night the receiver/display was moved from the front of the house to the rear of the house, closer to the transmitter, with fewer walls to penetrate, and with fewer sources of RFI between the transmitter and receiver.
The signal immediately jumped to 100% and has been solid for 12 hours now.
The issue is, we had 100% signal a *lot* when the station first went in.. and it got progressively worse and more intermittent over time.
Hopefully not a weather station failure in progress..
Only time will tell.
Updated 2019Dec13 – two days later the signal strength has remained strong and mostly consistent… just a few blips here and there of signal drop.
After many months of being without a weather station, we finally found one that should work for us.
This is an Acurite Pro (model number yet to be determined). It has arrived, been assembled, and is waiting to go outdoors and then to be connected to a data logging computer. We will try and use the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B that we used in the past with Wee-wx software and see what happens.
It will be mounted out back in the vegetable beds, about 2m off the ground. We are more concerned with ground temperatures where we work and play, and the veg grow, then we are about “more accurate” wind speed readings by being 10m in the air. In addition, this station does not log wind gusts, only regular wind speed.