Folsom - Empire Ranch Weather Station web page
Notes prepared by by Jay O'Brien
First notes: December 25, 2008
Updated December 27, 2009
This web page is http://obri.net/weather/home.html
Click
here
to
see the Weather Station data
Quick links: (see text below for more details)
Weather Station KCAFOLSO13 notes:
Our weather station and camera is located in Empire Ranch, the
easternmost part of the City of Folsom, California.
The weather station is at an elevation of 606' MSL, near the
highest elevation in Sacramento County, which is 858' MSL Carpenter
Hill, 0.94
miles SSW, also in the City of
Folsom.
The weather station is a Davis
Vantage
Pro
2, with a Davis
USB
"WeatherLink" interconnect to an Ambient Weather
WeatherHub AMBNSLU2.
The WeatherHub includes MeteoHub
software that uploads the weather data
every 30 seconds to Weather Underground using FTP protocol. This
equipment was purchased from Ambient
Weather
in
Arizona, where I
received expert assistance and guidance from Ed Edelman.
In getting the WeatherHub going, I had a problem with the MeteoHub
software that was quickly resolved by Boris Pasternak, the author
of
the MeteoHub program. Boris is in Germany.
Weather underground has assigned the identifier KCAFOLSO13 to
the
weather station. We selected the name "Empire Ranch" for it to
describe
our community.
The camera, or "WebCam", that is displayed by Weather Underground
is outside, looking northwest toward Folsom Lake. The camera is an Axis
211. It has an automatic DC-iris control to protect the camera when
the sun
is in view.
The camera uploads pictures, in .jpg format, every two minutes
directly to Weather Underground using FTP protocol.
I purchased the camera from Peripheral
Vision
in Michigan; Joe Gresham was very
helpful, and processed my order quickly; In fact I received my first
camera two days
after I ordered it.
I received knowledgeable and quick support from Don Mannion at Axis
Communications in Massachusetts. Don helped me with the selection
of the 211 camera that can look at the sun without damage, and he
assisted with many problems I had in coming up to speed with the
cameras and what they can do. This little camera contains a
full-fledged
computer with amazing capabilities.
Links to our weather station:
Weather
Underground
"Rapid
fire". This provides current
information and
automatically updates every 30 seconds. Every time you refresh the
page, Weather Underground will send a different background scene. Some
of the scenes are notable.
Rapid
Fire
on
WebCam This is an alternate "Rapid Fire" display,
superimposed on the camera image.
Weather
Underground
for
Folsom, California (ZIP 95630). Our
weather
station is in the list of stations under the "Personal Weather
Stations" tab towards the bottom of the page. It is called "Empire
Ranch".
If you select Our weather station, you will be shown a "history for
KCAFOLSO13" page that will show graphs and details for today's weather
as recorded here. You can select previous days, or Weekly, Monthly or
Yearly data if you wish.
Empire
Ranch
weather
history for today. This is a direct link to our
weather station's history for today,
bypassing the Folsom page.
Near the top of the page there is a selection for "Monthly" that will
show you summary data for the previous days in the current month. You
can select specific days, months, and other parameters to obtain
different summations of our data from Weather Underground.
If you click on the image,
it will show you a larger image.
The larger image, "JayOBrien's WebCam Current Image", updates every 2
minutes; click on "refresh page" above the image to see the updates. It
shouldn't say that it was updated more than 2 minutes ago, unless an
update was missed due to a problem with the camera or the internet.
Sometimes one or more will be skipped and you might have to wait 4
minutes or more for
an update.
Empire
Ranch
Camera
- Folsom Lake View. This is a link that will
take
you directly to the camera, looking toward Folsom Lake, 3 miles
away.
Once showing "JayOBrien's WebCam Current Image",
click on the image. This
will show you a full screen image. At this point you should be able to
clearly read the time
and date that is imbedded into the bottom of the left side of the image.
Camera history: Start at "JayOBrien's
WebCam Current Image". The calendar below the image
has a selection at the top; noon is the
default, and you can select morning, afternoon or evening. This
determines which picture to show for each date on the calendar. If you
click on "view video" on a particular date it will play a time-lapse
selection of frames from the camera captured on that date. If you click
on one of the images in the calendar, a larger image will display.
Click in the picture near the left edge and the previous day's image
for that time will display. The next day can be selected near the right
side of the picture. Images stored before January 11, 2009 were made
with an
inside camera that is no loger sending pictures to the web. Images
stored between January 11 and May
24, 2009, were made with a camera looking southwest that is no loger
sending pictures to the web.
Conclusion: I
intend
to
update this
web page in the future as this weather and
webcam station evolves. Your comments will be appreciated.
Jay O'Brien
Empire Ranch, Folsom, California, USA
jayobrien@att.net
