- News Items of Interest to CWOP Members Sep 10, 2015 - Fifteen years ago today, Sept 10, 2000, the CWOP member database was started, entries from a few interested hams were entered, and data started flowing. We (Steve Dimse and I) expected maybe a hundred people or so would join and send data to Steve's findu.com server for transfer to NOAA. So far, well over 30,000 have joined and over 12,000 stations are currently sending data, about 100,000 packets per hour. CWOP is the largest network in the MADIS surface data set, both in terms of members and observations. It has all turned out better than we thought it would.
Feb 28, 2015 - Wind article that mentions CWOP as "still going strong today".
Feb 23, 2015 - This recent NOAA news item tells of the MADIS move from research to operations and mentions CWOP.
Jan 15, 2015 - Matt Cooper, DW8108, was recently in a Chicago-area TV promo. Enter Matt's ID here to see about his station.
Jan 01, 2015 - As has been the case in previous years, there was a "Christmas effect" this past year clearly shown by this graph of new CWOP sign-ups per day for the last quarter of 2014.
Nov 12, 2014 - Recent NOAA/MADIS outage was apparently due to Chinese Hackers. Interesting Washington Post article here.
Oct 09, 2014 - Retired NWS meteorologist Rick Decker, CW6014, has installed and continues to help maintain about ten CWOP stations on the coast in Maine and Eastern Canada. This article (and pictures) shows Rick changing out equipment located in Nova Scotia. Note that a safety harness was needed because of the height.
May 12, 2014 - There is a weather knowledge quiz online from the Christian Science Monitor. At 15z on 05/12/2014, the average reader score was reported as 59%, and on 11/12/2014 it was reported as 58%.
Apr 24, 2014 - Davis instruments has issued a number of firmware updates to their weather stations products. They can be downloaded here.
Apr 08, 2014 - The paper Scientists@Home: What Drives the Quantity and Quality of Online Citizen Science Participation? is now available. It builds on a survey that many CWOP members participated in sometime ago.
Feb 03, 2014 - The new findU panel display feature announced in the Feb 01 post is now documented here.
Feb 01, 2014 - A new findU feature to display current data from your weather station is being developed. You can see Colorado cold and Florida warm and by inserting your ID into the URL, you can see your own weather. Steve is still working on the findU code that drives the display so expect changes in the next few weeks and if you have comments, let him know with the link at the bottom of the display.
Jan 06, 2014 - The new findU.com primary server mentioned in the Dec 11 item below is shown here.
Jan 01, 2014 - This is a list of the number of APRS weather data reports received at findU.com since CWOP was started. All of these weather reports are available online as shown in the Dec 11 news item below.
2000 - 12,068,305 (partial year starting 3/26/00)
2001 - 26,550,238
2002 - 46,645,570
2003 - 72,724,980
2004 - 121,160,685
2005 - 216,191,844
2006 - 326,012,005
2007 - 422,041,808
2008 - 345,230,769
2009 - 393,192,670
2010 - 469,111,968
2011 - 550,269,181
2012 - 630,927,031
2013 - 691,221,505Dec 23, 2013 - Due to the holidays, CWOP Support staff (cwop-support@noaa.gov) will be unavailable to register new members or to respond to update requests and questions until January 6, 2014. Email messages will be addressed promptly after that date.
Dec 11, 2013 - The new findU.com primary server is now on-line and the active storage, with one week of live data and 14 years of historical weather data is already 397 GB! Because of the increased storage (1.8 TB) provided by the new server, the weather archive feature has been restored. The large yearly tables were the first to get dropped as the live database expanded, but the old tables are back online now. Every weather report seen by findU.com in its nearly 14 years (a total of 4,246,697,581 through Nov 30!) can again be accessed on-line. For example, the weather at Steve Dimse's house (up until the internet failed) as Hurricane Wilma approached in Oct, 2005. If you have interesting weather events from the past to share, email the URL and we\92ll compile a list.
Dec 06, 2013 - Here is an article on holiday weather gift ideas. One of the ideas mentions CWOP.
Oct 18, 2013 - The CWOP Support staff (cwop-support@noaa.gov) are once again available to respond to e-mail messages. Expect some delay in answers to your requests as there is a large backog and staff members have other NOAA duties with backlogs due to the shutdown.
Oct 01, 2013 - CWOP Support staff (cwop-support@noaa.gov) are currently unavailable to respond to e-mail messages due to the lapse in FY2014 appropriations. Messages will be addressed once an appropriations bill has passed and operations are resumed. We sincerely regret this inconvenience.
Sept 17, 2013 - An August 13, 2013 RAID controller failure caused a two week outage on the WXQA computer. The same computer, with new memory, new non-RAID disk, and new operating system is now functional and the CWOP Solar Radiation Data are available again. Also, the daily data summary for each packet type: CW:@, DW:@, EW:@, ham:@, hex:$, positionless:_, :=, :!, :/, and :; are now available.
July 10, 2013 - Kate Murphy has a NY Times article titled "A Guide to Personal Weather Stations". She talked to several CWOP members during the time she prepared the article and it shows.
May 28, 2013 - Stephen Burk has written a paper mentioning CWOP as a supplier of amateur weather station data for NWP assimilation. You can access it starting on page 38 here.
April 15, 2013 - The NOAA operated CWOP Support e-mail link is now operational. So, any question on any aspect of CWOP operation can now be directed to cwop-support@noaa.gov.
Mar 28, 2013 - Davis Weather Products has issued firmware update 3.12 for Vantage Pro2, Weather Envoy, and Firmware 3.14 for Envoy 8X stations that were manufactured after April 2006. If you have a console manufactured before April 2006, you should stay with Firmware 1.90. (Note: If you try to install firmware version 3.12 on a Vantage Pro2 or Weather Envoy and the unit does not display inside temperature, inside humidity or barometric pressure readings, it means that you have a unit that was manufactured before April 2006. To correct this, simply download and reinstall firmware Version 1.90.) These updates may be downloaded from the Davis website.
Jan 09, 2013 - Jon Racy, long-time CWOP member CW0752, passed away on Jan 08, 2013. Jon was the Lead Forecaster at Storm Prediction Center (SPC), in Norman, OK. There's a nice memoriam page that mentions "His rooftop weather station became the accepted SPC employees' record of weather events in Norman."
Oct 30, 2012 - Philip has put together a neat way to view total rainfall from CWOP stations. For the near future, it will show the total rainfall during Hurricane Sandy.
Oct 09, 2012 - The CWOP1 server recently relocated from Texas A&M to the University of Oklahoma, as discussed in the Sep 30 item below, is now up and running. CWOP server availability can be checked here. Any CWOP member using a CW.... DW.... or EW.... ID should be sending packets to one of the CWOP servers or to cwop.aprs.net. The latter is a round robin that will be more reliable. Folks using CW.... DW.... or EW.... IDs should not be sending packets to ham radio servers even if they have an APRS validation code. More information on which servers to use is here.
Oct 02, 2012 - The uptime history of the WXQA.COM web site goes back to July 2009.
Sep 30, 2012 - Davis Weatherlink update 6.0.2, mentioned Sep 17 below, has re-appeared on the Davis website. No reports from anyone who has used it. So, test carefully before use.
Sep 20, 2012 - For many years, CWOP and APRS servers operated at Texas A&M and supplied reliable and valuable service to the CWOP community. Those servers were deactivated at 1800z on Sept 12 because Gerry Creager (AP009), who kept them going, moved to a new position at the University of Oklahoma. Gerry hopes to be able to provide the same service to the CWOP community from a new location in the near future. In addition to operating CWOP1, CWOP4, CWOP Aggregator and findU backup, Gerry also operated first.aprs.net and firenet.us. When either of these links becomes active, the CWOP1 server will follow close behind. CWOP1 availability can also be checked here.
Sep 17, 2012 - In response to a question by Ron Pippin (CW5020) about why software update 6.0.1 (Aug 21 item below) was no longer available on their web site, Davis tech support replied "There was a problem with 6.0.1 having to do with the annual network subscription. If you are not using that than you should be fine." Update version 6.0.2 will be available on the Davis web site soon.
Aug 21, 2012 - Davis Weather has just posted an update to the Weatherlink Program for Windows. The update (6.0.1) allows the software to rotate through the available CWOP/APRS servers until CWOP upload is successful. This fixed a bug, which on some systems, reduced reliability when changing servers. The update may be downloaded here.
Aug 2, 2012 - Jim Dudley and Marc Ganey have revised and updated their APRS Setup Guide on how to build and set up an AC or DC solar-powered APRS Weather Station based on their experience setting up several CWOP weather stations in the remote mountains near Hanford, CA. Additionally, Marc created a you tube video showing the steps to setting up a Solar Powered Davis APRS unit as has been done at several locations.
May 23, 2012 - The compressed raw data packets containing solar radiation measurements collected at APRS and CWOP stations for the past four years are now available through the Solar Data Page near the bottom.
Apr 26, 2012 - If you have updated the software for both WeatherLink and the Vantage Pro2 and find that the packets to CWOP have zeros as barometer data, look for Vantage Pro2 firmware version 2.03. Erich DW8823 reports that it fixed the problem for him. Apparently, the problem does not occur with a wireless system.
Apr 24, 2012 - Ron CW5020 reports that Davis Instruments has updated its Weatherlink software. Version 6.0.0 is available from the Davis website for current owners of its software.
Apr 21, 2012 - This is a different way to visualize surface winds over an extended area.
Mar 27, 2012 - Here's a new CWOP Information Page from the El Paso WFO. It has some really helpful documentation relating to operating a CWOP weather station.
Mar 25, 2012 - Recent article listing four volunteer groups, including CWOP, that provide weather data to the National Weather Service.
Mar 20, 2012 - MesoWest now has a new graph that shows how many CWOP stations have been received over the past 5 days.
Feb 01, 2012 - Downwelling solar radiation data (Watts/square meter) are now acquired regularly by findU and available for viewing here, where call is station ID in findU, xsize and ysize determine size of the graph, and last is the number of previous hours covered on the x axis. Entering ? for Call Sign and a recent date here will return a list of stations available.
Jan 31, 2012 - On Jan 28, during extremely cold weather in Alaska, a temperature of -79F was reported by CWOP station JMTA2. The weather instrument at this site is a Davis Vantage Pro 2 and is not rated to report accurately at temperatures colder than -40F. Also, it has been noted that when the ambient air temperature drops colder than -50F, the wireless Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather stations experience a significant drop in battery voltage. This drop in battery voltage results in a dramatic and unrealistic drop in the temperature observed by the temperature sensor. Here is a NWS Public Information Statement regarding the low temperature report at JMTA2 (Jim River DOT). Note that the manufacturer makes no claim that the station is accurate below -40F. Prior to the event, MADIS quality checking reported "...sensor is reading COLDER than expected".
Jan 09, 2012 - Price of Thermometer Soup is determined by yesterday's temperature. Details are here. Sounds like a good deal for a cold winter day (or the next day after a cold winter day:)
Dec 09, 2011 - CWOP currently supplies about 40,000 observations per hour to over 900 non-government and government organizations, like the National Weather Service.
Dec 06, 2011 - Since the tsunami and resulting nuclear accident in March, Japanese amateur radio operators have deployed radiation measurement devices and are sending the measurements through APRS. The locations are shown here after you zoom out six steps. Individual measurements can be seen by looking at the raw data for the individual stations and noting the three numbers after "X" in the data field. Details of the APRS radiation data format are in the March 25, 2011 CWOP News item below.
Nov 22, 2011 - Mike Hardiman of the NWS El Paso WFO (Weather Forecast Office) recently asked the New Mexico Department of Public Safety if they could add their small network of Davis Weatherlink stations to CWOP, and they graciously did so. These stations are mostly located at "Port of Entry" weigh stations and rest areas (zoom out to see them all). The only station not currently reporting is DW8893, as it is essentially in the middle of nowhere, and awaiting a communications upgrade.
Nov 07, 2011 - The answer to this inquiry, "I'm really rather impressed that I can just ask Wolfram a 7 day weather forecast and gives me the weather at my location..... This got my curiosity going as to where Wolfram gets this data." is here and involves CWOP.
Oct 19, 2011 - Regarding Thailand's worst floods in 50 years, this Bankok Post article tells of a local system where "The idea was inspired by the US government's Citizen Weather Observation Program that collects weather data from the public. The more citizens contribute data to the central system, the more accurate the picture of the water situation nationwide." Microsoft (Thailand) is working with a local partner to show how to apply a location-based information system to address the flood crisis.
Aug 30, 2011 - From Bill Morris, AR794, of the NWS Chicago WFO, "In the new storm spotter's guide there is mention of two volunteer programs -- CWOP, and CoCoRaHS beginning on page 13." Note the guide is a 27 MB download, but worth it.
Aug 21, 2011 - The Eureka Times Standard reports that Humboldt State University's Department of Geography has installed a full-scale weather station atop Van Matre Hall to spur engaged learning in physical geography. The station is DW8223.
July 11, 2011 - Jerry Madero, CW6521, operates his CWOP weather station just off the 17th green at Cornville, AZ's Verde Santa Fe as reported in this Verde Independent news article.
July 10, 2011 - This recent heavy rain statement from the TAMPA WFO lists many CWOP stations.
June 18, 2011 - Philip reports that the 6000'th photo was just uploaded. Congratulations to all.
June 06, 2011 - The weather station at the Pentwater Fire Station in Michigan was the subject of this recent news article.
June 02, 2011 - Columbia Weather Systems now has a Mac interface for WeatherSnoop software.
Apr 29, 2011 - Columbia Weather Systems reports that their Weather MicroServer supports CWOP for all of their weather station models.
Apr 28, 2011 - Ron Pippin CW5080 reports a follow-up to the Davis Weatherlink software update (5.9.3) announced on April 10, 2011. Since I downloaded it on April 10, I have had no issues with the software hanging when uploading to CWOP. Davis appears to have fixed this very annoying problem.
Apr 10, 2011 - Davis Instruments has just released an update (5.9.3) for their Weatherlink software. You can download it here. This update fixes issues related to APRS servers.
Mar 25, 2011 - APRS has added the capability to include ionizing radiation data in standard weather data packets in response to the interest due to the problems at the nuclear power plant in Japan. The data type indicator is "X" followed by three numbers. The measurement unit is nano Sieverts/hour with range from 02*10^0 up to 98*10^9 including ways to indicate values outside this range.
Mar 03, 2011 - CWOP now has over 20,000 members in 149 countries and is ranked third under meteorology in Google Directory.
Jan 20, 2011 - YoWindow is a display app that puts a visual display of the weather on a window on your computer monitor like looking out the window of your house. You can see forecast weather and can use a real picture as background. More info is here.
Jan 06, 2011 - Nick Petro of the NWS Flagstaff Office recently registered weather station WX7FGZ-3 near the top of Agassiz Peak, one of the highest mountain peaks in Arizona. At 11,600 feet, this is the highest weather station that we have ever registered in CWOP. There's a ski resort (the Arizona Snowbowl) there. This weather station is located about 100 feet above the top of their highest chairlift and here's a youtube video with the weather station shown at the start and at the end. There's huge interest in this station by the ski folks there and people visiting the resort or hiking up on the mountain.
Jan 01, 2011 - Jim Roal DW3043 reports that Weather Station Data Logger is a fantastic open source project supporting CWOP. Currently it is for Oregon Scientific stations and some other sensors but that may soon be expanded. It is completely free and open source.
Nov 17, 2010 - During a recent damaging windstorm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, the NWS reported that CWOP station AS753 reported the highest wind recorded, 72 mph. Bob reports "This set a station record. The previous was 71 mph on 12/01/07 at 1230 while we were in town. We returned to find a once tall fir tree down across our garden fence. Both winds came from nearly the same W to NW quarter."
Sep 19, 2010 - James Perkins, KN1X, a CWOP member in Colton, OR was the subject of a recent newspaper article.
Sep 17, 2010 - Here's an article on how CWOP members help and contribute their data on Hurricane Karl.
Sep 10, 2010 - Ten years ago today the first entry into the the APRSWXNET station database was made. Since then the name has changed to the CWOP database and it has grown to 18,729 entries. On the average, about 5 new entries were added each day for the past decade. How time flies!
July 05, 2010 - Karl Uppiano, CW3375, author of the 1-Wire Weather Service for Java software package reports that since Verzion is out of the ISP business, he now has a new URL for his web page describing the service.
June 25, 2010 - Pete Jensen, CW8077, collected a tornado pressure signature during the June 21 severe weather outbreak near Eagleville, Wisconsin. Pete's data is under the heading "Eagle Tornado" about halfway down in this NWS Severe Weather Report.
June 16, 2010 - Here is a neat weather data viewer with lots of features. It should show parts of NY and New England, but you can drag and drop the viewing square in the lower right corner to your region of interest. You can zoom and pan and change the density of stations displayed. Also, you can overlay the current NWS radar image.
May 23, 2010 - All of the data that CWOP delivers to MADIS and then to the community of over 900 user organizations must first go through one of the two findU servers. One of these servers must be replaced in the near future and donations to raise $6,000 for the new server are being accepted.
May 21, 2010 - Today, the number of entires in the CWOP database passed 18,000. So, CWOP has about 18,000 members, but not all are active. Currently, about one third of the members regularly send in weather data.
May 12, 2010 - CWOP member, Fred Bruenjes, AT553, has an interesting web cam display that uses an all-sky camera.
Apr 27, 2010 - Today, the number of pictures posted for CWOP sites reached 5000 exactly, and the CWOP member to push it over the edge was CW3644 on Hawaii. Included in the five photos is a rather fine green John Deere tractor.
Apr 05, 2010 - Davis has posted an update (5.9.2) to its Weatherlink program. Reports indicate that this update has fixed the problem with rain data not being reported correctly to CWOP. Also, these issues have been addressed: 1) Fixed the APRS data transfer when using Vantage Pro2 firmware version 1.90; 2) Fixed slow internet transfer issue introduced in WeatherLink version 5.9.1; 3) Corrected the unit label for "In Air Density" in the "Plot" screen, if it is set to "kg/cu m".
Mar 30, 2010 - Here is a way to see the total number of active CWOP station in different regions of the world and to drill down to see the location of each in this CWOP world map.
Mar 23, 2010 - The Student Network for Observing Weather (SNOW) uses CWOP in a weather-related scientific educational activity in Alaska. Links to SNOW and the Arctic Climate Modeling Program are here.
Mar 07, 2010 - Information from Dick Long, AS202, is that Davis has recently gotten everything updated to the point where if your VP2 console has the latest firmware 1.90 and your IP logger firmware 1.0.8 then the previously missing parameters of wind gust and one hour and 24 hour rain will be sent to the server. All of this firmware is available from the support section of the Davis website.
Mar 06, 2010 - Christopher Fasciano, DW1399, reports that after a week or so having problems with Weatherlink version 5.9.1 and emailing back and forth (to Davis) he was told the 5.9.1 is really for the Vue weather stations, not the vp2, vp1, and older stations.
Feb 28, 2010 - Davis has posted an update (5.9.1) to its Weatherlink program. Reports indicate that this update has fixed the problem with USB connections not being reliably recognized. The issue with rain data not being reported to CWOP apparently still exists. See item # 8 here for explanation of rain data not being reported to CWOP.
Feb 21, 2010 - If you use Google maps or Google Earth mapping, Alf H\F8gemark has info on a CWOP KML file for viewing all CWOP stations using Google mapping. Also he has a way to see which CWOP stations have web pages and gives links to those pages.
Jan 06, 2010 - The Colorado Avalanche Information Center CAIC uses CWOP weather data obtained through MADIS.
Dec 28, 2009 - Over the Christmas weekend of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 63 people signed up as new members of CWOP. Many of these likely got weather stations as presents as it is that time of year. Happy New Year to all!
Dec 09, 2009 - The login URL to submit snow data to CWOP has changed to http://madis-data.noaa.gov/snow_data_login.html. Information on sending snow data to CWOP/MADIS is here.
Sep 22, 2009 - Ron Pippin CW5020 reports that Davis has updated its Weather link software from 5.8.3 to 5.9.0. Click on the 5.9.0 link here to see the new features and to download the update.
July 15, 2009 - Jeff, CW6571, reports finding a WX reporting website that lists CWOP obs after they go through MADIS and here's the link that goes to his. Jeff thinks that they have been reporting CWOP obs since June, because all his history dates back to June 1st. They appear to be about 40 minutes behind on current CWOP obs.
June 20, 2009 - In the July issue of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine there is an Weather Watchers Article that says... That is a lot of weather to negotiate. The professional weather services and research centers parse out most of the details for us, but multitudes of Texans have also taken our extreme weather variables to heart. Want to know the current weather stats at pinpoint locations in Crowley, Midlothian or Frisco? How about Texline or Muleshoe? Hundreds of Texans maintain weather stations in their own backyards as members of the Citizen Weather Observer Program. These citizen scientists collect weather data and upload it to state and national weather service centers. They offer real-time conditions and detailed climate data. In essence, they provide weather quality assurance for the state.
June 14, 2009 - All CWOP weather data go through the findU servers. For the first ten days in June, there were 30,623,084 packets reaching findU (more than 3 million a day, 35.4 a second), of these 11,874,362 were weather data packets (1.1 million wx reports a day, 13.7 a second). The findU servers got an average of 1,610,478 hits per day during the month of May.
April 2002 through May 2009 - Older CWOP news items are available here.
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