Greetings from Northern Arizona

[McQ]

I am new at this, though I've been a weather watcher for a long time.  I've recently replaced an old Davis wired station with a Davis Vantage Vue wireless.  I'm running WeatherCat on an old MacMini (it may be slow but there was no cost related with taking it out of the dusty box in the garage).

We are located in central Winslow, AZ on the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona, about 55 miles east of and 1,500 feet lower than Flagstaff.

My goal is to provide accurate and timely weather reports and alarms to the NOAA station since the weather reports currently available are less than accurate for our location.  The nearest radar station is located 50 miles south at approximately 7,400 feet.  As a result, the returns are from roughly 12,000 feet, which is above the clouds and active weather we experience.  The Winslow Lindbergh Regional Airport provides updates hourly (or so) to Wunderground and WxBug, but it seldom matches current conditions in town. 

My current sub-project is trying to figure out how to get the satellite imagery for anything besides Europe!  I'd love to have Arizona, but would settle for North America.  All of the pre-loaded sites are Europe and I don't find anything in the manual for changing those pre-sets. 

Looking forward to getting this thing going. 
Fran

[Steve]

Hi Fran, and welcome to the WeatherCat forum!

Fancy seeing you over here. (Fran and I have been talking over on the WXForum, and I recommended he give WeatherCat a try.)

I pasted a link on the US satellite imagery for you over on the other forum. I don't use it, so I don't know if it meets your needs. Enter this link into Preferences --> Imagery --> Channel 1 URL and see if it is what you are looking for.

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/sfc/satsfc.gif


As for your goals, WeatherCat (and I don't think any other Mac or PC software) send data to NOAA. You can send to a lot of data collection agencies using the inbuilt tools or various templates, but NOAA gathers their own data, as far as I understand.

Let us know how we can make your start with WeatherCat easier. You'll find a very friendly and helpful bunch of people here, and Stu, the developer, is a regular contributor.
Steve

BTW, I see you are a Yehuda Moon fan! It was my morning's entertainment for several years until it was ended. I was "smorris" on the comments section, but I didn't post often. I've got all the books and swag to read whenever I need a Yehuda fix, though. I ride a Bridgestone RB-T and an Xtracycle, along with the occasional go on a unicycle. I've recently been testing the waters about talking Mrs Avon-Weather into agreeing to my getting a Brompton, but I can't really justify it to myself, let alone her.

[McQ]

Thanks Steve.  The station is on the CWOP and I'll be reporting by email to the Bellemont NOAA office, so I have a way to go, but getting closer.

The first thing I did every weekday morning was to check the latest YM.  I was saddened the first time they stopped, delighted when they re-started, and deeply saddened when they finally said goodbye.  I have all the books and my granddaughters are being inculcated in the culture of the Kickstand.  My wife and I both ride - we have Specialized Roubaix and Ruby road bikes and Spot Acme town/touring type bikes with Shimano Alfine-11 and Gates carbon belts.  We have had as many as 5 bikes each, but have refined our stable to eliminate some of my injuries - I like mountain biking, but with trifocals and other age-related issues I got hurt on just about every outing.  After a concussion and torn shoulder, we both sold the MTBs and just continued down-sizing.

Logorrhea is one of my problems.    I can hear my wife shouting "Don't encourage him!"

Which forum would be most helpful overall?

Thanks,
Fran

[Steve]

Which forum would be most helpful overall?

For WeatherCat specifically and Mac weather stuff in general, this forum. For non-OS weather related stuff, specifically a vast knowledge of Davis Instruments, then WXForums.

My bikes: http://smorris.smugmug.com/Leaning-Against-the-Wall The mountain bike is what I converted into the Xtracycle. Sister-in-law just upgraded from a Dolce Elite to a Ruby Comp Compact. I'm a steel and lugs sort of guy, and keep an eye out for an old Trek 970 in good shape. I've ridden carbon and aluminum, and just don't like them. I don't know what I'd get if I were buying a new road bike now. It was always going to be a Rivendell Atlantis (the current iteration of my RB-T), but there are so many good small builders out there now. Maybe one of the rando style bikes.

[elagache]

Hi Fran and welcome to the WeatherCat forum, 

I see your question about WeatherBug on the other thread, but there is a better answer now if you are willing to download the beta version of WeatherCat that you'll have on this thread:

http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=845.0;topicseen

It includes a plug-in that allows you to upload data to WeatherBug.  Don't worry about using a Beta, this is the final release candidate.  It is about to become the official stable version of WeatherCat.  I have been using it to upload to WeatherBug for a few weeks - works great! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[WCDev]

I am new at this, though I've been a weather watcher for a long time.  I've recently replaced an old Davis wired station with a Davis Vantage Vue wireless.  I'm running WeatherCat on an old MacMini (it may be slow but there was no cost related with taking it out of the dusty box in the garage).

We are located in central Winslow, AZ on the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona, about 55 miles east of and 1,500 feet lower than Flagstaff.

My goal is to provide accurate and timely weather reports and alarms to the NOAA station since the weather reports currently available are less than accurate for our location.  The nearest radar station is located 50 miles south at approximately 7,400 feet.  As a result, the returns are from roughly 12,000 feet, which is above the clouds and active weather we experience.  The Winslow Lindbergh Regional Airport provides updates hourly (or so) to Wunderground and WxBug, but it seldom matches current conditions in town. 

My current sub-project is trying to figure out how to get the satellite imagery for anything besides Europe!  I'd love to have Arizona, but would settle for North America.  All of the pre-loaded sites are Europe and I don't find anything in the manual for changing those pre-sets. 

Looking forward to getting this thing going. 
Fran

Welcome to the forum Fran.

In the drop-down list of pre-set images you'll find:
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/GIFS/ECIR.JPG (east cost infra red)
and
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/GIFS/ECIR.JPG (west coast infra red)
or paste the link Steve gave you.