Topic: Florida Temperature and Pressure Measurements

[TheBushPilot]

This nearly daily reoccurring phenomenon happens with our Lakeland, Florida weather station.

I have a few hypothesis as to why this happens but the culprit is up in the air. No pun intended. This period was logged every minute over a period of 1440 minutes or 1 day. Time in UTC.

I suspect the prominent ridges may be boundaries from sea breezes, the "choppy" measurements might be the station observing convective cells during clear days sometimes observable on radar. Not to be mistaken for popcorn convection, these "cells" are similar to what dust devils form from and can often times be viewed on radar.

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Maybe someone knows what's happening?


Cheers

[ocala]

Here is one from Ocala which is about 70 miles to the north of Lakeland on the same day and appx time. I added the rain to show the spike. I went back and looked at each day to the beginning of June and some days with rain showed a corresponding spike in pressure. Other days it did not. So I don't know what to make of that.   This is updated at 10 minutes. Try adding rain to yours and see what you get.
I love looking at weather graphically. The passage of a front. The approach of a tropical system etc.
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[gszlag]

I am more of a barometer hardware guy rather than a forecaster, but I took a look at the Lakeland airport METAR records which note the time that thunderstorms are rolling through.

Cold downdrafts in an environment of very hot sunny, mixed cloud  conditions could be the cause for the large temperature swings and the pressure readings whipping around.

Just a guess on my part. Thanks for the charts. Very interesting!

[ocala]

Gust fronts from nearby storms will also account for temperature swings.

[TheBushPilot]

Interesting points, during that entire measurement period no rain fell. That's not to say there weren't showers in proximity to the station however.

Today the same occurrence, this time there are showers to the south in Bartow and Fort Meade.

Yesterday there was rain reported from 00z to 05z (8pm EST to 1am EST).

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Not that a still image really helps given the "dynamically" changing environment.

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Cheers

[julietta4789]

hey! it's interesting what you've noticed with the readings in Lakeland.
Your hypotheses about sea breeze boundaries and convective cels make sense. It might be worth checking if those "choppy" readings are linked to local atmospheric conditions. installing additional sensors could also help gather better data. let us know how things go after further analysis . sometimes it's good to chat with other users who might have similar experiences.

[JesseLikesWeather]

It has been a relatively dry August here in Northwest Florida, here is my data for the month so far:  [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[TheBushPilot]

The Florida CSP002 site finally received a new charge controller and the results are conclusive. From what I understand the charge regulator built into the CR200X is faulty causing a "back-voltage" leak to common ground erroneously modifying the barometric pressure reading due to the reference voltage (should be 0V) to be something greater than 0. This in turn causes the reading to spike seemingly randomly or so we thought. Comparing graphs it's clear what was going on.

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And now with a new charge controller installed (Victron 75 V 15 A MPPT) the barometer no longer freaks out when the regulator is charging the battery. You can see just before 20:00z UTC is when the new controller was installed after a brief break in data and subsequent resumption.

Update 06/26/2025:

And now with the barometric pressure reporting correctly now for over 24 hours.

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Cheers