Topic: Obtaining Weather Data from Power Outage

[Farmtalk]

I have a WS-2000 weather station, and on May 25th, we had a huge localized storm here right over the house due to a storm that flared up briefly along an outflow boundary. About 8 trees fell on my roadway and power was out for about 24 hours.

I don't have a generator, so there's a data hole on my website, WU, etc. from that time period where my station was without power.

Is there anyway to obtain this data from the station and get it online? I thought perhaps it could add value to someone and thought it could be worth trying to get online.

[galfert]

If you had a power outage, then likely your WS-2000 was not powered. So there is no data to be gotten.

To plan for future power outage you can put your console on UPS power. I'm sure a UPS won't last 24 hours but it will suffice for a smaller outage. But then you are left with csv data on an SD card if you put an SD card in. This format can be uploaded to a personal database if you run your own software like Cumulus MX, Weather-Display or WeeWX or personal website. But it won't be a piece of cake to get this data imported. It is possible, you'll just have to manipulate headers and understand the data import process of your personal database.

Another option is to also put the Cumulus MX or Weather-Display or WeeWX system on UPS and then your data never skips a beat directly to the personal database. You'll need a GW1000 to run these software.

If you were thinking of uploading missing data to the likes of Weather Underground, WeatherCloud, PWSweather Ambientweather.net or any other online service the answer is no you can't. None of them (even others I've not mentioned) accept anything but live data and so there is no catch up. WU used to have this feature but is no longer.  The exception being that Davis stations do have data loggers and they will catch up Weatherlink.com as long as you keep the console UPS powered.

[Farmtalk]

This answered all of my questions thoroughly! I appreciate it, Galfert as always!

[galfert]

Another option that I've set up for myself is a backup Internet connection. Sometimes having UPS power for your Internet modem, router and weather console is not enough if you have an Internet outage. As sometimes you have power but what is gone is just the Internet. For this reason my solution is to quickly turn on my smartphone's hotspot Internet sharing feature. You can make your hotspot WiFi SSID and pass key be the same as your home network. Then just ensure that you power off your WiFi so as to not have an access point (the home WiFi) with no service running as that will cause problems. What happens then is the weather console sees your phone's hotspot and it treats it as if it were your same home WiFi service and you get to keep uploading to all the online services.

The trouble with this is that since you have to turn off your home WiFi for this to work then you have no way of knowing when the Internet comes back. Unless you test with a directly connected Ethernet connection computer (with home WiFi off). A more advanced approach is to set up dual WAN on main router and then add a dual WAN connection to yet another router that is configured to be a WiFi bridge, then the smartphone's SSID can actually be something different but only this 2nd WAN WiFi bridge connects to it, and then the home WiFi keeps working as the main router will utilize a failover WAN scenario....and it will automatically revert back to primary WAN when Internet service returns.