Who are you?
Jeff, a causal hobbyist interested in weather and weather research. My background is not weather, but in computers.
What is with the website 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.
What’s the purpose of this blog?
Between a number of other hobbies, I’ll poke at weather related topics here and there. This blog is to document them for myself and make them available to anyone who maybe interested. The blog is also used to keep a log of my personal backyard weather station issues and maintenance log. Finally, the blog hosts research topics that I maybe exploring.
What weather station are you using?
In February 2005 I started using an Oregon Scientific WMR968 which was retired in August 2012. The replacement is a Davis Vantage Pro 2, running from 2012 to present day.
Is your weather station measurements accurate?
Yes and maybe. Yes for my backyard and surrounding area, but maybe for legitimate weather reporting according to CWOP (Citizen Weather Observer Program). For example, wind measurements need to be 10 feet above roof line, but mine setup is only 6 feet above roof line.
I’m also now living in a wide valley, which has its own micro climate compared to the rest of Didsbury ‘on the hill’. Giving what I have to work with, I’ve made every effort to ensure the measurements are accurate. I’ve record up to 9 degree difference between the valley flow and the hill top.
Historic WX in Olds, Alberta
I originally started my backyard weather station web site in Olds, Alberta in March 2005. There was no local current weather conditions and the closest official weather station was 20km or 50km away, in very different micro climates. The station I put up, broadcasted current weather for 5 years before I moved to Didsbury. Over that time the weather station received an average of 40,000 page views a month. The main website is now long gone, but some the historic data is still available at Weather Underground. As of January 2021, WUnderground has lost a lot of the historic data. What is left is visible here:
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IALBERTA44/graph/2009-01-31/2009-01-31/monthly
How to I contact you?
Email me at info@didsburywx.ca