How to properly place your outdoor thermometer
04:52 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 29, 2009
By TRAVIS PITTMAN / KING5.com
excerpts:
SEATTLE – With temperatures in the Puget Sound region breaking records this week, many people are playing a watching and waiting game – waiting to see when the thermometer outside their home will reach triple digits.
…
Below is a photo of a thermometer sent to KING 5 News Tuesday afternoon by a viewer in Oso, east of Arlington. It clearly shows the temperature reading 116 degrees. You can also clearly tell the sun is reflecting off it and it’s mounted right next to a building.
source: KING 5 Viewer…
The National Weather Service says this is where you need to place your thermometer to get an accurate reading:
– It must be in a shaded, well-ventilated and open area, 5 feet above ground, give or take a foot.
– Away from sprinkler systems
– No closer than four times the height of any obstruction. For example, if a building is 10 feet tall, it needs to be no closer than 40 feet from that building.
– Located over natural ground such as grass, dirt or sod.
– At least 100 feet from road or concrete.
…
The picture they provide is what the surfacestations project is all about. Note the 100 foot distance from asphalt.
source: National Weather Service
Here is a diagram of how to properly place your thermometer to get an accurate reading.
Full article here h/t to WUWT reader “Ed”
at the risk of being labelled a ‘denier’, the sun reflection may also be the flash from the camera.
The bright white reflection is the flash from the camera, not the sun. The only shadow is on the lower left edge of the thermometer which is typical for a point and shoot camera with the flash close to the lense. There is no way to tell if the thermometer is or has been in the sun due to the flash filling in the shadows.
Keeping up with weather is not climate it has been well below average in the SF Bay Area this July except for a short period two weeks ago.
MJPenny
A rare but not unheard of weather pattern has been in place in Washington State this week and temps in the Puget Sound area have been 10 degrees F. higher than east of the Cascades. However these things can change rapidly as the pattern breaks down, namely (from the current NWS ‘discussion”):
GRADIENTS HAVE TURNED ONSHORE ALONG THE COAST…AND STRATUS MANAGED TO WORK IT’S WAY INTO SHELTON AND PARTIALLY DOWN THE STRAIT. KCLM (Port Angeles) WAS A WHOPPING 22 DEGREES COOLER AT 16Z THEN THIS TIME YESTERDAY… IMPRESSIVE.
OT: Why do folks write it’s for its? Please stop!
People don’t live in those places though…If I want to see what’s the temperature in my house where I live I’d put the thermometer inside and not on my neighbors field…
The standard house exterior thermometer is made to be visible from inside in order to see APPROXIMATELY how cold or warm it is outside. Those thermometers are not only affected by the city island effect but mainly by the wall-window effect. We use them only to help us decide what to wear and how to dress the kids when they go out. I don’t see the utility of applying NOAA-like correction factors to decide what to wear, even if they want you to believe that in 50 years everyone will walk naked in the streets.
Ray (16:36:42) : “I don’t see the utility of applying NOAA-like correction factors to decide what to wear, even if they want you to believe that in 50 years everyone will walk naked in the streets.”
Give Obama a few more years and we’ll have no clothes. Bring on that global warming!!
I was definitely hot yesterday on the east side of Seattle, inland and away from Puget Sound. Unofficial readings were as high as 108F on Weather Underground when I checked at 3PM yesterday. The airport at SeaTac gave an official temperature of 103F, two above the all time record.
The Seattle Times did not report the weather as climate however. They said what it it clearly was, a strong high pressure system drawing hot air from the arid regions east of the Cascade Ranges (where 100F plus temperatures are common from May to September).
I was pleasantly surprised by the Times reporting. That did not in any way however stop the faithful from preaching the end of the world. They are having their usual scold session wherever they can find an ear.
The folks in British California are also sweltering.
John F. Hultquist (15:59:30) : — . . . WORK IT’S WAY INTO SHELTON AND PARTIALLY DOWN THE STRAIT. KCLM (Port Angeles) OT: Why do folks write it’s for its? Please stop!
John: what’s worse: “WAS A WHOPPING 22 DEGREES COOLER AT 16Z THEN THIS TIME YESTERDAY…” Why do folks write ‘then’ for ‘than’? Please stop that too.
…and how does a degree come to whopp? whop? In fact, how does anything whop?
Thirty six Celsius peak temperatures just north of the forty ninth over the past couple of days. Thirty four Celsius at present outside my kitchen window.
For Nanaimo locals, the Coast Bastion Hotel on Front Street is doing special deals for air conditioned rooms while this warm weather continues.
Robert Wood:
Kinda like Penticton weather in Vancouver, eh?
Yes, flat tires go whop, whop, whop. The only exception is Pierelli tires.
That kind of weather pattern is quite common in the fall in California. You just don’t see it develop so far North very often or so early in the season. It is generally an October sort of patter that develops 500 miles or so farther South.
Peter F. : then versus than
My fault was I did not catch that error in their text until I had hit the submit button.
Note that 16Z is 9 AM on PDT or 8 AM on PST.
Camera flash seems a good call, too.
re. thermometer placing:
– It must be in a shaded, well-ventilated and open area, 5 feet above ground, give or take a foot.
What generates the shade (for shaded area) in an open area about midday time?
“weather” being the operative word.
helicopters go whop, whop, whop.
Thanks for the great site Anthony but I have to ask: Is this postworthy? I mean look at the thermometer, the latest in bakelite moulding technology.
Just to answer some of those questions:
The reason this is being pointed out should be obvious. The viewer who sent in the picture (and likely, now, most of the viewers) believes that the temperature is 116, when in fact that is not necessarily the actual outdoor temperature. I once lived in a 3-storey apartment that would often exceed 120F on the third floor after the hot afternoon sun heated the upstairs, but the outside temperatures rarely got above the 80s.
Still, my friend in BC (I love the British California bit, Robert Wood!) has been telling me about this horrible oppresive heatwave, while just the other side of the mountains in Calgary we’ve been seeing cool and barely warm temps pretty much all “summer”. Actually, from what I can see, the deflected jet stream is blocking that heat on the coast and dragging all the cold arctic stuff down here. I hate it.
Usually we get our summer weather directly from the west (ie. Washington State), this entire week it’s been coming from straight north.
marek: What generates the shade? The little white box around the thermometer.
Competent literacy- spelling, grammar, punctuation, meanings of words that sound the same but are spelled differently, is a huge problem on every website I ever visit. You can thank the fact that the AGW types make up a majority of our teachers in K-12 and beyond. There, their, they’re; its, it’s, two, too and to- this is a far larger problem than AGW. Best solution: keep a dictionary handy and consult it if you have any doubt about what you’re about to write. Your, you’re, yore, heal, heel, he’ll- goes on forever. A proper elementary education is all that is needed to correct this corruption, one thing that our government seems (seams) incapable of providing. Start at home.
L,
There’s also affect/effect. I remember it like this: the effect of the Sun affects the climate [sorry, Leif].
Then there’s the apostrophe. Lots of misuse can be avoided by remembering that the apostrophe indicates either a possessive [Bob’s baseball bat], or a contraction [it is = it’s; likewise: they are = they’re — not their or there]: click
[Mrs. Smokey is a middle school Principal. But I can spell better than she can. I tell her it’s because she was educamated in California. Then I duck.]
Class dismissed.
Most of the time in Seattle the clouds provide the shade. My mom has the same set-up at her house. It is fine for checking the morning temperatures prior to heading out because it is on the shady side of the house then, but gets a lot of afternoon sun.
deadwood wrote:
The Seattle Times did not report the weather as climate however. They said what it it clearly was, a strong high pressure system drawing hot air from the arid regions east of the Cascade Ranges (where 100F plus temperatures are common from May to September).
I was pleasantly surprised by the Times reporting. That did not in any way however stop the faithful from preaching the end of the world. They are having their usual scold session wherever they can find an ear.
~~~~
Have you noticed, despite the extreme lack of precipitation, they aren’t screaming drought? It seems to be a typical refrain every summer.