Weather Station Information
The Pepperridge Weather Station has been in continious operation in the Phoenix Metro Area since 1997.
The station was first located in Chandler,Az near the intersection of, Arizona Ave. and Chandler Blvd. The station operated at this location from Jul 1997 to Jul 1998.
The station moved to it present location in Aug, 1998. It has operated in North Phoenix near the intersection of, Cave Creek Rds and Union Hills Dr, since Aug, 1998.
The Pepperridge weather station is now powered by the  Davis Vantage Pro 2 Plus with FARS™
(Fan-Aspirated Radiation Shield). The VP2 Pro Plus station ,(pictured right), collects; temperature, humidity, dewpoint, barometer, rainfall, rainfall rate, Solar Raditation, U.V. Index and windspeed and direction with 10 min averages .
This weather station replaces our Davis Weather Monitor II™ weather station
which now serves as a back-up ,(pictured below left).
Our VP2 weather station now has the ability to display near real time live updates on the internet thanks to some new AJAX and PHP scripts and the addition of two new weather software programs
the first is Virtual VP™ by SoftWX, Inc™. This program has the ability to create multipule virtual serial ports. The Virtual VP™ program directly collects and anaylizes the weather data from our Davis Vantage Pro 2 Plus with FARS™
(Fan-Aspirated Radiation Shield). Weather station. The Virtual VP™ software program allows you to connectly up to 4 weather software programs simultaneously to the same serial port. So we are now running simultaneously the weather programs; WeatherLink5.71™ , Weather Display™ and
Weather Display Live 5.01™.
The Weather Display 10.37S build: 134™ program produces a file called the "clientraw.txt" which allows us to create the near realtime data with AJAX and PHP scripts which access this file and create the graphics displayed on our Home and Currents Pages. Hope you enjoy the new look
Both the Weatherlink and Weatherdisplay software programs collect and store the data from the Vantage Pro2 Plus with FARS™ and write files to their respective data bases.
Both programs also upload the data to this internet site 24 hrs a day, occasionally the station will be offline while the computer server is rebooted.
This will most likely occur in the early morning hours between 2am and 6am local time.
This station has proven to be fairly reliable and accurate. The temp/Humidity Sensor is housed
in a solar radiation shield with Fan-Aspritation to prevent errant temperature readings from accidental direct solar exposure and reflective heat. The automatic raingauge is located directly above the radiation shield as part of the ISS (Integrated sensor suite).
The UV and Solar radiation sensors are mounted on a shelf next to the rain collector on the outside of the (ISS).
There were some problems with the original Weather Montior II console unit
not operating correctly at low humidity below 10% ,especially when the temp/Humidity Sensor was replaced with the newer improved model.
But since the replacement of the console unit, approximately 3 years ago with the newer improved model, lower humidity levels are being recorded more accurately.
Both of our Anemometers are mounted on 10ft poles that rise above the roofline or about 20ft off the ground,(pictured left). There are no immediate major obstructions to block wind speed or direction readings.
The exception is a couple of palm trees to southwest that may cause a minor obstruction that may slightly block wind speed readings, when southwest winds occur, so the wind readings appear to be
fairly accurate. Davis rates the anemometer at +/- 5% for wind speed and the wind direction at +/- 7°.
The automated rain gauge for the Weather monitor II, (pictured above), is fairly accurate and it is backup by a weather bureau standard issued rain gauge. However sometimes minor
adjustments are necessary to bring the two gauges into agreement with one another. The barometer is periodically adjusted,(approximately once a month),with the reading at Sky Harbor Airport.
The real time lightning detection system is here just in time to track the monsoon season thunderstorms. The lightning detection system consists
of a Boltek™ lightning detector system with the dectector's antenna mounted to the anemometer mast at height of 17 ft, (pictured above). The lightning analysis is performed by
Lightning 2000™ from Aninoquisi Software.
The webmaster has recently received storm spotter training from N.O.A.A. Phoenix office and now is officially
a member of the Sky Warn storm spotters program. This means that severe weather events observed at this station will be directly be reported to the Phoenix Weather
Service Office. The Sky Warn Program helps the NWS verify where severe weather events are occuring and helps validate the weather warnings they issue.
Local & Regional Weather Statements, Watches And Warnings
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Pepper Ridge North Valley Random Weather Facts |
HABOOB
The name comes from the Arabic word habb, meaning "wind." A Haboob is a giant wall of dust sometimes 3000ft tall,that travels a 40mph+, they frequently form here in Arizona from the gust front outflow boundary of summer thunderstorms. Haboobs are most frequent in Southwestern North America during the months of May through September, with the most frequent occurrence in late June, but they can occur in every month. (A picture of a classic Haboob appears on our Monsoon Page.)
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