Didsbury Alberta Unoffical Weather Station

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

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.

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!

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.

• 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

• 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?

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

Due to a power supply recall, the outdoor air quality sensor will be offline until a replacement arrives.

Replacement anemometer cups arrived today. Since I had to order new parts, I took advantage and ordered a new 24-Hour Fan for the temperature sensor and batteries and the new Aerocone rain collector with anti bird sitting spikes. Got everything installed today. Some pictures of the upgrades.

New anemometer cups installed and spinning.

Old rain collector

New Aerocone rain collector

New 24-hour fan and batteries.  The bearings on the old one was really worn out.  The fan hasn’t worked properly for the last year and a bit.  This should hopefully give me better temperature readings when there isn’t any wind and when the sun is beating down on the unit.

Also made some coding updates to the main front page.  Added some new features and updates.

Happy weather watching!

Today’s storm caused damage to the anemometer.  The system recorded 116km/hr winds with hail. New part is on order.