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General Weather/Earth Sciences Topics => Aviation Weather => Topic started by: miraculon on July 11, 2015, 04:35:13 PM

Title: Wind "missing" on local METAR report on Wx Radio
Post by: miraculon on July 11, 2015, 04:35:13 PM

I was listening to NOAA Weather Radio this afternoon, and when they gave the roundup of the local stations as part of the marine forecast, it (actually the female text to speech voice) said that KPZQ wind direction was missing.

Having notified the local airport last February of anemometer anomalies, they replaced the windset. I could see that the vane, anemometer and vane were all new looking. So, I had some doubts that such recently new equipment would have started having problems already.

I looked at some on-line METAR resources and the wind, while fairly steady from the North to NNE, it was changing in the single digits of degree direction.

Does NWS use some kind of algorithm to flag wind direction as "missing" if the direction is constant? It seems that it is declared "calm" if there is no speed indication, but if the wind is very consistent in direction could they be concluding that the vane data is missing? It is worthwhile to mention that it was "North", which can be the "open circuit" direction on a lot of wind vanes using a potentiometer.

Just wondering if this was some kind of algorithmic glitch, or the vane is going flaky already.....  :-k

The wind direction on my own equipment, pretty much agrees with the predominant direction at the local airport today.

Greg H.

Title: Re: Wind "missing" on local METAR report on Wx Radio
Post by: CW2274 on July 11, 2015, 05:14:01 PM

I know this doesn't answer your question, but it's not missing here.http://w1.weather.gov/obhistory/KPZQ.html

Title: Re: Wind "missing" on local METAR report on Wx Radio
Post by: miraculon on July 11, 2015, 05:50:23 PM

Thanks for that link. It seems to have been limited to NOAA Weather Radio for some reason.

Greg H.