Comments on: Surveying USHCN Stations From My Desk

By: dscott

dscott — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:55:58 +0000

Google Earth is far better than the maps.live.com site when it comes to the size of the picture and clarity. However, the one advantage of that site is you can save the URL whereas with Google Earth you can’t, you can save the location on the program but you can email the picture and save as a jpg. With google maps straight from google.com you can send a link of the map. Mapquest sucks on the height limitation but you can send an URL.

By: dscott

dscott — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:19:37 +0000

And all this for free over the internet! Ummm, Anthony, how much money did the GISS people say it would cost them to even create a proposal to survey their own equipment??? snicker, snicker, snicker

Maybe you should send them a friendly note letting them know what’s for free. I assume every one of these stations has a longitude and latitude coordinate???? Punch it in Google Earth ( a separate program you load on your computer via Google) and walla you have your site plan.

Now that I think of this, these people work for … NASA, the people who put satellites in orbit? Ehem, if they want really fine resolution, they the government, already have the capability to see what color shirt you have on. Think I’m kidding? Look at the google earth pictures of houses and cars parked on the street, I can tell you the color of the car parked on the street. Those pictures were intentionally limited for clarity to 214 ft, you can go closer but the picture gets out of focus when you go lower than this. If they allowed, you could focus enough to tell the make and model of the car.

By: John Goetz

John Goetz — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:38:06 +0000

Anthony, just sent an email saying that I quickly tried finding a station that can be surveyed from the comfort of my La-Z-Boy and I did find Decatur, IL after missing out on two other attempts. In this case, maps.live.com had a good aerial shot whereas maps.google.com had nothing of quality. I will try to write Decatur up tonight.

By: Bill F

Bill F — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:08:45 +0000

You might be able to accomplish something similar using the maps.live.com website and the “birds eye” feature. I don’t think there is a specific “measurement” tool available, but the birdseye feature allows you to look at a site from a variety of angles and could probably allow some very close estimations.

By: David Walton

David Walton — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:19:30 +0000

This positioning actually looks like it is about as good as you can get in an urban environment where large heat sinks abound ands there is no large, undeveloped or park space.

By: Chris Imming

Chris Imming — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:09:17 +0000

As you may or may not know the KSU campus suffered more than $20 million in damage from a tornado within the last two weeks. Are you sure the sensor is still there? If it is not, will it be replaced in the same location or moved?

REPLY: According to the state climatologist, still there.

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:00:16 +0000

Colleges and universities often have people interested in weather and sometimes you can find photos of the station and even the curator through a campus weather station website.

REPLY: Found that the State Climatologist resides there at KSU, already have her after getting better photos, thanks.

By: Russ

Russ — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:28:57 +0000

With all the work that you have put into this project, you definitely deserve an “easy” survey every now and then.

By: Tom Bruno

Tom Bruno — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:49:08 +0000

“I got lucky.”

Luck = preparation + hard work + acting on opportunity