Mornin' all, Having set up a weather station, complete with
traditional Met Office standard rain gauge, sheathed grass minimum
thermometer (I haven't yet sourced a Stevenson screen if anyone on
here has a spare!) it occured to me how many on here manage to take
readings at exactly 9am every day. With the school run and other tasks
it is frequently impossible for me to make it back in time and I end
up sometimes taking the readings at, for example, 9.20am.
How many of you have taken readings before or after 9am and recorded
them as "9am" - you can e-mail me in confidence.

"whitehead1972" wrote:

Mornin' all, Having set up a weather station, complete with
traditional Met Office standard rain gauge, sheathed grass minimum
thermometer (I haven't yet sourced a Stevenson screen if anyone on
here has a spare!) it occured to me how many on here manage to take
readings at exactly 9am every day. With the school run and other tasks
it is frequently impossible for me to make it back in time and I end
up sometimes taking the readings at, for example, 9.20am.
How many of you have taken readings before or after 9am and recorded
them as "9am" - you can e-mail me in confidence.

If you aim to take your readings as close to 0900 (it should be GMT)
as possible, that is all you can do. If, for any reason, I am more than
15 minutes away from the nominal ob time I simply make a note of it
in the book. If 0900GMT is unattainable because of work or other
commitments, you have two options (at least): either select a time
- 0800, say, or 0730, or even 1800 - which you can stick to on most
days, and call that your terminal hour, or use any automated equipment
you may have to apportion rainfall (and the occasional max or min
temp) to the correct climatological day.

Official networks have never been able to guarantee that all their
co-operating observers carried out the observations at the nominal
time (on some days it could be quite clear that this was not the case)
although the majority probably succeeded most of the time.

Philip

"whitehead1972" wrote:
How many of you have taken readings before or after 9am and
recorded
them as "9am" - you can e-mail me in confidence.
[and]

"Philip Eden" wrote ...
snip Official networks have never been able to guarantee that all
their
co-operating observers carried out the observations at the nominal
time (on some days it could be quite clear that this was not the
case)
although the majority probably succeeded most of the time.

Philip


.... given that many *Met Office* observing stations (as distinct from
the aforementioned co-operating network) were situated on airfields
(military or civil), and that observations had to be *finished* by
HH+50 for transmission to local ATC (and also coded up for teleprinter
transmission), the 0900GMT nominal time for temperature was always
effectively 0845 (or similar), bearing in mind that before the days of
distant-reading thermometers etc., there was sometimes a lengthy walk
to the screen and back (for reading max/min etc.), then back to the
Office to read/convert pressure readings, perhaps melt some snow in
the rain gauge etc., etc. The pressure element always had to be the
last thing read (for the benefit of altimeter setting), so the other
things had to go before.

The current crop of AWS SYNOPs have a time-stamp group added now so
you can see the actual (as opposed to the nominal) time of the reading
.... example he-

200910101150 AAXX 10124 03772 15576 /3504 10170 20120 30124 40154
51011 69921 91150
333 55303 21128 87/20=This is for Heathrow, timed
as '1200' GMT (the group 10124 ... 10th day, 12th hour), butthe
'91150' gives the actual time of data capture (and of course the cloud
data, where given, will be an integrationover a short period
too).Martin.

--
Martin Rowley
West Moors, East Dorset (UK): 17m (56ft) amsl
Lat: 50.82N Long: 01.88W
NGR: SU 082 023

On Oct 10, 12:21*pm, "Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom
wrote:
If 0900GMT is unattainable because of work or other
commitments, you have two options (at least): either select a time
- 0800, say, or 0730, or even 1800 -
Philip

Interesting that you have not included 0000 there Philip!
I know there are good reasons for not using this, but surely in time
it will happen.
After all it does seem totally illogical to record an event which
happened on one day as actually occurring on another!
Anyway, I'm sticking to my auto 0000 readings.

David Mitchell. Langtoft. East Riding.

On 10 Oct, 15:42, David wrote:
On Oct 10, 12:21*pm, "Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom
wrote:
If 0900GMT is unattainable because of work or other

commitments, you have two options (at least): either select a time
- 0800, say, or 0730, or even 1800 -
Philip

Interesting that you have not included 0000 there Philip!
I know there are good reasons for not using this, but surely in time
it will happen.
After all it does seem totally illogical to record an event which
happened on one day as actually occurring on another!
Anyway, I'm sticking to my auto 0000 readings.

David Mitchell. Langtoft. East Riding.

Speaking as someone with the old Stevenson Screen manual system which
involves walking out in the garden, I think I'll stick to 09:00!

Graham
Penzance

"Graham Easterling" wrote in message
...
On 10 Oct, 15:42, David wrote:
On Oct 10, 12:21 pm, "Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom
wrote:
If 0900GMT is unattainable because of work or other

commitments, you have two options (at least): either select a time
- 0800, say, or 0730, or even 1800 -
Philip

Interesting that you have not included 0000 there Philip!
I know there are good reasons for not using this, but surely in time
it will happen.
After all it does seem totally illogical to record an event which
happened on one day as actually occurring on another!
Anyway, I'm sticking to my auto 0000 readings.

David Mitchell. Langtoft. East Riding.

Speaking as someone with the old Stevenson Screen manual system which
involves walking out in the garden, I think I'll stick to 09:00!

Graham
Penzance

==============

Those who have to go away to work during the day find 0900 very
inconvenient, which is why other times would be more suitable.

Will
--

In article ,
Martin Rowley wrote:

[Snip]

The current crop of AWS SYNOPs have a time-stamp group added now so
you can see the actual (as opposed to the nominal) time of the reading
... example he-

200910101150 AAXX 10124 03772 15576 /3504 10170 20120 30124 40154
51011 69921 91150
333 55303 21128 87/20=This is for Heathrow, timed
as '1200' GMT (the group 10124 ... 10th day, 12th hour), butthe
'91150' gives the actual time of data capture (and of course the cloud
data, where given, will be an integrationover a short period
too).Martin.
+I+ would have got the date and time from "200910101150" prefix and assumed
91150 referred (somewhat improbably) to the maximum wind speed in gusts in
the last hour. Shows how you can get out of touch!

--
Rodney Blackall (retired meteorologist)(BSc, FRMetS)
Buckingham, ENGLAND
Using Acorn SA-RPC, OS 4.02 with ANT INS and Pluto 3.03j

Martin Rowley wrote:

[Snip]

The current crop of AWS SYNOPs have a time-stamp group added now so
you can see the actual (as opposed to the nominal) time of the
reading
[and]

"Rodney Blackall" wrote ...
+I+ would have got the date and time from "200910101150" prefix and
assumed
91150 referred (somewhat improbably) to the maximum wind speed in
gusts in
the last hour. Shows how you can get out of touch!



.... it's by no means universal: had a quick look at the 0600Z SYNOPs
(via FSU), and we (UK that is) are very much in the minority. Finland
seems to add the group, but most of our near neighbours, including
Eire, don't. The largest collection of users lies in the Far East!

When the group was first added (several years back now) we [NMC] did
interpret these groups as 'gust' groups - until we realised that there
seemed to be a lot of GST50s about!

Martin.


--
Martin Rowley
West Moors, East Dorset (UK): 17m (56ft) amsl
Lat: 50.82N Long: 01.88W
NGR: SU 082 023