Winter Minutes....

As you may know…. I am a bit of a numbers geek. This winter has seemed a bit.... well... uhmmm… cold to me. I dug into the numbers from the last 4 years. 

I would define a “Winter Minute” as any minute where the temperature was 35 degrees or less. So, how many “Winter Minutes” have we had this year compared to the previous 3 through the 26th of February?

2014 – 7,735
2015 – 870
2016 – 2,740
2017 – 13,010

 Yup…. It’s been cold….

Beautiful Piece Of History Passing By On Sunday... 2/26/2017

A beautiful, historic yacht will be passing by us tomorrow, probably for the last time. Lots of Pacific Northwet history with this one. At one point, the State of Washington purchased it as a "Fisheries Patrol Vessel".... and was used almost exclusively by Governor Walgren as a personal fishing boat in the 40's. He took President Truman out on it several times. 

About The Olympus 

A Starry Night.... And More....

The stars were out last night...  

This is best watched full screen either at this link in HD: Night Sky Time Lapse

Or on YouTube:

And followed by a nice pink convective sunrise....  HD Link: Pink Convective Sunrise

And...  What a diverse sky from left to right this morning....

And....  A time lapse from this afternoon....  
Best viewed in HD: Time Lapse Review Of Today

Lemonade Out Of Lemons.....

After Weather Underground pulled the plug on data feeds to my software, I have been scrambling trying to find a suitable replacement. This weekend I found exactly what I was looking for.  All of these features are embedded directly into the page.  The new additions are:

A new, improved 7 day forecast directly from the NWS.

 

National Weather Service Area and Marine Advisories.

I have also added these to the mobile site at: Skunk Bay Weather Mobile  

Things will be changing in the coming weeks.  As always, I appreciate feedback.

 

A Valentines Day Fireball.....

You know what they say…..  Just when you least expect it….  Last night, the skies were relatively clear and the Everett Sky Chart also predicted clear skies.  However, the American Meteor Society prediction was pretty grim for capturing meteors.  First, there are very few out there right now and also when there is a full moon, there is so much light pollution it makes it even harder.  Kp level was very low, so no chance of an Aurora.  But, I decided to run my Canon night cam last night anyway.  As it turns out…  There it was…..

Here is a time lapse from last night.  Don't blink or you miss the flash....

HD Link:  http://skunkbayweather.com/0214.html

Or YouTube:

Changes In Website

Recently Weather Underground dropped support for legacy weather station software.  The function of the weather software I use is to allow my PC to communicate with the weather station and organize the data so it is easily used.  Weather Advisories and 5 day forecasts are two of the critical items I rely on from Weather Underground.  They also provided “mesonet” data which gives visibility of other local weather stations in the area.  I have been slow to make a move in hopes that Weather Underground would reconsider their position.  A little caveat…  They have dropped all support sharing data with us, yet they are still pulling and using the data from our legacy systems.  The part that benefits them has stayed intact.  In February, 2016 IBM acquired Weather Underground.  There was a lot of talk in the weather community that nothing good was going to come from this….  Well, it looks like that has come true.

Along with this, the media is slowly dropping the 5-day weather forecast tiles that can be easily embedded.  For now the only stations left are KING5 and KIRO7.  You could say that my site is a victim of progress.

I am evaluating different solutions to all this and it will no doubt result in a significant re-write to get the features back that I want to see.  Just thought I would provide an update as data is slowly disappearing from my site.  I hope to have some solutions soon.

Aurora Time Lapse

Last night we finally had some clear sky and a minor Aurora show. I ran the new cam all night. There are 4 faint meteors in this footage as well…. FWIW, my old 24/7 cams didn’t pick up a thing. This new camera has WAY more detail. None of these Auroras would have been visible to the naked eye either. Time lapse makes it a lot easier to see the lights working. The all night video can be viewed here...  Best in full screen:  Aurora Time Lapse