Crestone Weather Center
Keno's Home and Crestone's Official Weather Station
Weather Station Notes
Last updated on February 18, 2024
- Current nearby stations reports not working -
First, this old station's online program that I use, is called VWS, and it uses old METAR tags to send us the data coming in from other locations. At one time, I had two choices to choose from when using this source (from NOAA and Hamweather); then about 10 years ago, only one source was available (Hamweather). Now that source has stopped working. I am trying to find out if the service they provided is no longer available, or if something is just wrong with their tags. If they stopped their service, then that means there's no other way to get the condition reports from other locations using this old program that I have. BTW, the VWS program, once the best available to use on the Net, hasn't had any updates in years and isn't supported any longer. So, I may have to find a brand new internet program to run the weather station online with. Hope not, and this did happen once before, about two years ago, but after 2 or 3 days, the reports started to work again. I just hope that's the case this time, but as I type this out, we are going on 5 days of no reports.
(updated in Feb 2020)
In regard to the current conditions shown on the main
weather page for nearby stations, because the current conditions shown at all of the listed
locations are reported by automated systems (other than at Denver), the overhead sky
conditions are sometimes in error, since the auto sky sensors read the sky cover
wrong at times (since they only look straight up, and therefore miss any clouds
anywhere else in the sky). To see current sky conditions reported by humans,
click
here.
Back to Current Condiations
More Weather Station Notes
(and some info on me, Keno)
The station's stats page at Weather For You is shown using Coordinated Universal Time (or UTC) which is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time at 0° longitude, and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. In some countries, the term Greenwich Mean Time is used.... The official abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time is "UTC" and not CUT. This abbreviation arose from a desire by the International Telecommunication Union and the International Astronomical Union to use the same abbreviation in all languages. The acronym came about as a compromise between English and French speakers: While Coordinated Universal Time would normally be abbreviated as CUT, the French name used is "Temps Universel Coordonné," which would be "TUC".... So why did they settled on UTC, since that appears to still make no sense in any language? Well, you can blame the U. S. Army for that, since they keep the time for the entire planet using Zulu time (ZT) and... well... you can read up on this here if you feel like getting even more confused!
This station's stats are updated online every six to ten minutes (depending on internet speed), 24 hours a day. My first online weather station, an old Oregon Scientific unit, appeared on the interent in 1999, back when I lived in Manitou Sps, Co. At the time the station, which was an old-fashion wired station, reported to a different web site and consisted of 1 main web page. In early 2001 the page was transferred to my domain, keno.org, and became a true weather site containing many added pages of weather info. My site was then upgraded again in late 2001 when I purchased a new wireless Oregon Scientific internet weather station with added features. That same station began to collect data for Crestone, CO, in November, 2002, and it became Crestone's official weather station** in 2006. The new and latest current online station, which is made by Davis Instruments, started up in September of 2019.
**The stats you see online are live and accurate. These readings are taken automatically by the Davis weather station every 3 seconds, then placed online and updated in the timeframe as noted above. However, the highs and lows that show on the site for the temperature readings are sometimes re-entered manually during the day with info that comes in from what is actually Crestone's official, government owned weather station (which is an off-line station), which is located in my backyard next to the online station. Variations in readings of 1 or 2 degrees is common for different weather thermometers, so I do adjust the high and low readings generated from the online station to reflect the official readings from the government station. On many days no adjustments are needed since the two thermometers do read the same most of the time.
I myself
have been a weather buff since I was a boy growing up in New York. I hand-made
my first weather station at the age of 10, after reading in a book how to go
about building such a station. Then the following year my mother, who realized
I wasn't just going through some phase in my childhood, purchased for me a real
home weather station. Home stations back in the 1960s were very different from the ones we have today. For example, the anemometer used LED lights which would flash
at different speeds, and with that, you would figure out what the wind speed and wind direction was. I recall when I got that station, it was the
first time I ever saw LED lights, which although they were first invented in 1927,
they weren't used in electronic components until 1962.
I must say, all
weather equipment, especially home weather stations, have sure come a very long
way since the 1960s. Yet the old mercury thermometers and dial barometers which
we used to use, did seem to give us even more accurate readings than the digital units
that are in use today.
Keno