Topic: Solar Eclipse's Impact on our PWS's

[RIKIAWS]

I was wondering if anyone was thinking about seeing if the solar eclipse this Monday will impact their PWS in any way, such as looking for change in temperature, UVI, Light (Watts), etc.  It would be interesting to compare sites in the direct line and some of us a bit more distant.  Just a thought.  It could be fun to create a database looking at the differences to see if they are statistically significant.  It would be a good descriptive study with many data points.  If people are interested, let me know, I would be willing to create the database and do the statistical analysis.

[davidmc36]

My station should get about 96 percent or so. I will monitor from remote to ensure it is running as we will be traveling South a short ways for Totality viewing.

Will have to put MB power on WiFi switch on case it locks up. A lot of issues with it lately.

[N0NB]

The forecast is for sunny here on Monday.  I suspect there will be drops of both temperature, UV, and solar radiation as the eclipse occurs.  There area is supposed to have 85% coverage.  I didn't have the solar sensors at the time but in 2017 we were just a few miles into the band of 100% coverage.

[Garth Bock]

I am on the Arkansas line (south of Branson, Mo.) and I am looking at 97 % but I am driving an hour to the centerline or as close as I can get (central Arkansas to a small town) I know that my Davis will show a big hit on all sensors as it did during the 2017 eclipse.

[davidmc36]

Have the camera ready. Took a few test shots today.
 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]  [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[gszlag]

Unfortunately, I am only in an area 0f 91% totality but it did get dim outside.
Fortunately the heavy clouds that we had all day broke to reveal a brilliant blue sky just a few minutes before maximum obscurity : 3:17 pm EDT.

As far as the impact to weather, the ouside temperature is still dropping 1/2 hour after the event. Temperatures are starting to recover  about 35 minutes in.
Normally on a spring day, going from a cloudy to a sunny day would increase temps very quickly. Temps had dropped 2.3C before going back up.

The spread between Altimeter pressure and SLP have naturally, widened a fraction of a fraction due entirely to the temperature drop.

Although not a total eclipse for me  - still an interesting experience nonetheless.

[RIKIAWS]

Thanks for sharing.  I have had a similar experience in my observations.  Still downloading the data.  I will attempt to take a picture of the data this evening and post here or attach an excel spreadsheet for viewing.

[alanb]

My location is just in the 85% coverage area, but the effect was still fairly dramatic and clearly showed up on my Ambient WS-2000. The maximum coverage for us occurred at 2:01 pm. In addition to showing up on the solar radiation and UV chart, the temperature dropped by 2.5 °F.
 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[PaulMy]

It was fun watching and observing my station data from just after 2:00 to about 3:30 pm  http://www.komokaweather.com/cumulusmx4/trends.htm#solar.  Solar dropped to 0, and temperature from 18.4°C to 14.4°C.  Also attached a zip of the change to some darkness at our maximum eclipse around 3:17 pm

Enjoy,
Paul

[davidmc36]

Check my stations. The drop in solar was of course dramatic. The temp really fell too. The flag where we went to view total, basically went limp for two minutes.

According to Time and Date it was 99.84% at my location.

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]  [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[PaulMy]

Hi David,
Comparing your PWS Weather to mine (komoka) looks quite similar but we may have had a bit more sun.  You wouldn't have had your B-L Sunrecorder working would you?


Enjoy,
Paul

[RIKIAWS]

Thanks to everyone for sharing, it appears that we all had very similar experiences.  Here are the data from my observations as a table rather than a graph.
[img][img] [ You are not allowed to view attachments ] img]/img]

[RIKIAWS]

Here is a graphic of the data I sent earlier.

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[Garth Bock]

Here is my station in Blue Eye, Mo. where the totality was 97.7 % with max at 1:53 PM.  You can see the dips around 2 pm. I didn't set VWS granular enough but I was getting the cameras ready and almost forgot. I went to Clinton, Arkansas about 2 hours straight south on the center line and the skies cleared for a fantastic totality of 4 min 16 sec. I shot film so it will be a couple of days to get my prints.

[davidmc36]

Hi David,
Comparing your PWS Weather to mine (komoka) looks quite similar but we may have had a bit more sun.  You wouldn't have had your B-L Sunrecorder working would you?


Enjoy,
Paul

Sadly, no  the PC it runs on has puked. With no ability to publish it has not been priority. I see there is a feature in CumulusMX for BL data but I run that on RPi and don't know how you would input the device to that platform.

[awilltx]

For all the data geeks out there.  Here’s the MESOWEST screenshot for my station from the zone of totality here in Dallas, showing changes before, during and after. Totality occurred at 13:40 and lasted through 13:44. Since the column headers were chopped, they are left to right:

Time, Temp, Dew Point, Wet Bulb Temp, Relative Humidity, Wind Speed, Wind Gust, Wind Direction, Quality Check, Pressure, Sea Level Pressure, Altimeter, 1500m Pressure, Solar Radiation, Precipitation 24hr, Precipitation since local midnight.

[PaulMy]

Hi,
@PaulMy wrote:

You wouldn't have had your B-L Sunrecorder working would you?

@David wrote:

Sadly, no  the PC it runs on has puked. With no ability to publish it has not been priority. I see there is a feature in CumulusMX for BL data but I run that on RPi and don't know how you would input the device to that platform.

It would have been nice to see the B-L data collection and changes during the eclipse.
The B-L Sunrecorder program writes a small text file every minute with the solar and sunshine date and that is read by Cumulus to display that data in graph along with the other weather station data.

From the posts it seems others in the eclipse path had similar solar and temperature changes as well.  The dreary darkness and temperature change was the most surprising to me.

Enjoy,
Paul

[N0NB]

Here are mine at 85% coverage and perfectly clear sky until well after the event.

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[Bunty]

Looking ahead, the mayor in my town is already looking forward to the next solar eclipse affecting the local area.  On FB he posted, "Mark your calendars now, Stillwater! On August 12, 2045, we'll be almost on the centerline of totality for the next major American solar eclipse."

I don't if I'll live that long to see it.  But I wonder more from all the turmoil in the world, will the world still be around as we know it now?

[TheBushPilot]

Here was my sad attempt at observing the eclipse with my station...it took way longer to set up than I expected and in the end didn't even record all the things I wanted. Still though managed to get solar radiation readings of totality.

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]


Cheers

[ocala]

Looking ahead, the mayor in my town is already looking forward to the next solar eclipse affecting the local area.  On FB he posted, "Mark your calendars now, Stillwater! On August 12, 2045, we'll be almost on the centerline of totality for the next major American solar eclipse."

I don't if I'll live that long to see it.  But I wonder more from all the turmoil in the world, will the world still be around as we know it now?

In the year 2045, if I'm still alive, I'll be in the totality, if these old eyes can still see.
Ok, that was a bad attempt at the song In the year 2525.