New Web Address!

www.didsburywx.ca

Well, I finally gave my personal weather site it’s own Internet address. For years the weather stuff was part of my side business BlueVistaVentures.ca. I had helped a few people build and configure personal weather stations and websites. Now that I’ve retired the business, it is time to clean up 16 years of linkage and systems.

What is with the address name? Well, the first bit is obvious, the town the weather station is in. Didsbury, Alberta, Canada. The WX is morse code shorthand for the word weather. So it is commonly used as the abbreviation for the word weather. So the address is translate to: DidsburyWeather.Canada
Not to be confused with the township of Didsbury, UK, which is now a suburban area of Manchester, England. Which Didsbury, Alberta is named after.

Please update your bookmarks to the new address. The existing weather.bluevistaventures.ca will continue for another year or so.

Happy weather watching! Cheers, Jeff

Coldest air temperature recorded at this location

On January 13 and 14, 2024 my weather station located in Didsbury, Alberta within the Rosebud Creek valley, Valarosa Crossing neighbourhood, recorded the lowest air temperatures of -40° Celsius. This has been the lowest ever recorded by my weather station since installation back in August 2012. Previous record was -39° Celsius back on February 7, 2021.


The weather station has struggled to transmit data during these extreme cold hours in darkness. The backup lithium batteries, that keep the system running when the solar panels cannot power it, are only a year and half old, but maybe the solar panel batteries have lost some of their power and therefore cause the backup batteries to be used more. New batteries will be installed soon.

Anemometer offline – battery issues in the cold

The anemometer lithium backup battery doesn’t have enough power to send the data in this -37°C weather we are having. Stopped sending data at 4am. Although, it did find a bit of juice to send again at 5:30am. I had replaced the battery in June 2022, which should still be good. Replacement is now on the todo list this summer, when I can climb up onto the roof.

Once the sun gets up, power will be restored and wind speed and directions should start reporting again.

Tornado 6km south of Didsbury

July 1 often has a big storm and this year was not any different although this year was the worst. I had some golf ball hail and a tornado that touched down 6km south of my location which left a few farmyards destroyed.
A few photos from what I saw from my place and then near the ground zero area.
Thankfully at this time no reported injuries!

Tornado funnel seen from Didsbury
Golf ball size hail hitting the water
Railway grain car in middle of field. Brown path above was tornado path.
Unlucky weather station, got hit with golf ball hail.

No other damage been found. Few years back hail broke the anemometer sensor on July 1.

New anemometer and batteries

After 10 years of spinning 24/7, the bearings were not spinning as freely. I was able to replace with a newer to me anemometer sensor unit and then replaced the wind speed bearings. Hopefully more accurate wind speeds will be recorded now.
Also put in new backup lithium batteries both the anemometer transmitter and the main temp/rain/solar sensor transmitter.
Here is to another 10 years of spinning in the wind!

Additional Sensors

Got my hands on used Solar Radiation Sensor & UV Sensor. Installed today and data is now being tracked. I’ll see how long these last as they are about 6 years old already. The rest of the old used weather station will be used for back up parts.

Also did some basic cleanup on main sensor unit. Few spider webs and debris.

One hot summer!

Counted up the number of days my weather station recorded 29C and above for the day high.  Sure a lot of them this summer.

# of Summer days 29C and above

2021* – 26

2020 – 7

2019 – 4

2018 – 10

*June 1 to August 15,2021

Maintenance

  • Replaced CR123 battery with Lithium version in Anemometer unit and main sensor unit
  • Gave wind cups and vane a wash.
  • Zip tied wire to mount.  Plastic zip tie was broken

WX cleaning

  • Clean main unit. Spiders in it blocking rain.
  • A weird black dots on plastic. Tried to wash off, but won’t come off.  Air pollution?

PurpleAir Sensor ONLINE!

After a long wait for the replacement power supply, it finally arrived today and got the sensor back online.