"Meteorologically Disturbed" wrote in message news:liV5d.125744$D%.14979@attbi_s51...
Lou,

While nicely written, Blue Hill's plea for help compares apples to oranges
and overlooks several key facts. Firstly, your home "Davis" or whatever
other station doesn't require much in the way of voltage and can survive
many hours on batteries. The AWOS/ASOS network contains an integrated
network of sensors and electronics, including several high voltage
instruments (ceilometer for one), and most definitely cannot operate on
battery backup. The exception of this is the barometer which is a standalone
unit. Secondly, these surface observations don't forget are owned now by the
FAA and are first and foremost for aviation use. If the airport itself is
closed to traffic, then in all likelihood there's no reason to maintain the
system during a failure.

However, what's most likely the case is that many of the ASOS/AWOS were up
and running and logging data internally just fine, but their dial out
connectivity was severred. The same would apply to your home weather
station. If you're running on battery power but have no way to transmit your
observation, then the same problem applies.

As for lightning, almost all of these stations DO have lightning sensors. A
check of NLDN data across Florida showed no thunderstorm activity associated
with the landfall of Jeanne. Given it's tropical nature, nighttime landfall,
overall weak appearance, and lack of sustained 50 dBZ echoes, I wouldn't
have expected lighthning anyways. The only thunderstorms I saw were
yesterday afternoon just offshore of West Palm, more due to afternoon
heating than anything. These were included in the PBI observations.

All very good points.

Yes, there are higher power equipment in ASOS/AWOS installations which
would probably have difficulty running on batteries. However, what
about a generator?

It is also a good point that many systems probably were not able to
transmit. However, shouldn't there be back-ups for this? I would
think that there would be alternate communication means if the primary
means was unavailable. If TV crews are able to report from within a
hurricane, the ASOS/AWOS stations should be able to report, as well.

Also, granted that many systems do have lightning data fed into them
from the national lightning data network and therefore can detect
thunderstorms. However, there have been many times when I see TSNO in
station obs. It is also maddening that the system automatically
removes the TSNO if the oberver is logged in, even if the observer
isn't augmenting the observations (many level of service C stations).
I have noted this problem at stations many times.

=====
Raymond C. Martin, Jr.
Associate Meteorologist, AccuWeather Inc.- http://www.accuweather.com/
New Jersey Expressways and Tollways - http://www.njfreeways.com/
Ray's Winter Storm Archive - http://www.njfreeways.com/weather/


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