- Hourly Summary
- Hourly Detail
- Hourly Winds (6-minute data)
- Daily Summary
- Daily Detail
- Daily Winds (6-minute data)
NDBC's site has various views and graphs of recent data, and also some archives of older data.
The station has been running nearly 3 weeks since its overhaul, and for the most part the news is good. The new batteries appear to be fully charged and maintain voltage levels a bit higher than seen with the old batteries. All instruments continue to communicate with the logger. The two SeaBird CTDs are showing an agreement on salinity measurements that was rarely found with the Teledyne CTDs we usually use, which raises hopes for better CTD performance this year.
The GOES transmissions were spotty at first but as of this writing we are receiving 100% of the expected transmissions for over a week. Initial (post-overhaul) transmitter performance was running at only 50% success rates for a period of many days. It's not clear why this should be so, and why performance has so substantially improved. One possibility is that the satellite antenna (which was not replaced on this trip), whose underside was showing signs of peeling paint, has had some kind of moisture damage; or that the satellite antenna cable was damaged. This wouldn't explain why transmissions improved, however. Another possibility that occurs to me is perhaps the transmitter antenna is partially blocked... by birds. We see lots of boobies resting on the aerial instruments at this station, but it's not known if they could "block" the satellite transmissions by sitting on the antenna. We may want to device an antenna bird-deterrent for this site.
If there's bad news, then it's related to the secondary measurements of winds by the "WXT" Weather Transmitter made by Vaisala. On this trip we unexpectedly found that the custom-made bird deterrent on the old WXT had been overcome by the boobies. Five of the six spikes were broken off and the sixth was bent sideways. That meant we had no deterrent for the new WXT, and indeed we are already seeing the unrealistically-high wind signals that suggest the sonic transducers are being blocked by birds. However, we still have wind data from the anemometer, and the WXT will continue to report other measurements (air temperature and pressure, humidity). The WXT's precipitation reports may also be unreliable.
But all in all the news is good!
Mike J+