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”
@ur momisugly O, bother
One whops when one strikes something or someone very hard. Whop is of ME origin (wappen), probably echoic. Whopping is the present participle of whop and means “exceptionally large”. as: AGW is a whopping lie. Al Gore is a whopping laureate.
Apostrophes aside; damn, that’s hot! People are dying from heat stroke, malaria and malnutrition in otherwise first world countries. Our coasts are falling into the ocean at ever increasing rates. Whole species are dying right on our very doorstep. Plants are withering, crop yields are at their lowest in decades. Third world countries are dropping further and further into poverty and starvation. The arctic is about to disappear, and all the polar bears with it.
Oh, wait. That *isn’t* happening.
Even when we take it as given that the earth is hotter today than it was last year (or last decade), the sea level has risen, that the arctic is nearly gone (sic), what is the actual result of these horrific effects?
I’ve often posed this question, but almost universally, any ‘effect’ noted is the result of pollution (e.g. mercury is a big issue where I live in the SC coastal low-country) and not CO2 or global warming. Which is fine – let’s do something about that, but stop blaming CO2 as the cause of every bad thing that happens in the world (I believe NumbersWatch has a rather extensive list of all this contradictory things which are caused by the ‘evil’ global warming).
ked5 (19:36:57) :
Have you noticed, despite the extreme lack of precipitation, they aren’t screaming drought? It seems to be a typical refrain every summer.
Oh, they are indeed screaming drought! The governor and her water czar have convened the drought council.
Expect the “Drought Caused by Global Warming” announcement and subsequent headlines in all national media outlets next week.
I have that same thermometer on my deck. It is a piece of junk. If the sun is shining on it and it is 60 degrees outside, the thermometer will read 80 degrees. I haven’t decided how I am going to fix it so it reads properly. Maybe I’ll let it read the temperature of the trash heap.
deadwood,
Yeah, I remember when Gregoire did this a few years back too. And then the rains came. And suddenly the talk of drought went away quietly. I always laugh when they talk about drought in the Pacific NW.
Maybe I will send in a picture of my thermometer mounted on the dash of my car. With the windows rolled up i can clearly demonstrate global warming.
Of all the weather we’ve had, this is definitely the most recent.
Yeah, drought in Western Washington, at least, is the norm rather than the exception. Seattle gets less annual rainfall than Dallas, and where I am north of Seattle we get about 10″ less annually than Seattle, about 26″. Most of that rain comes in the winter and fall months. In the summer, we average less than 1″ per month. If that aint drought…
It’s obvious… according to all climate models, a rise in CO2 concentration will induce a runaway rise in temperature. The guy that took the picture probably opened a can of beer or just breathed on the thermometer.
Jeff B. (10:09:13) :
Yeah, I remember when Gregoire did this a few years back too. And then the rains came. And suddenly the talk of drought went away quietly. I always laugh when they talk about drought in the Pacific NW.
Jeff Alberts (12:38:49) :
Yeah, drought in Western Washington, at least, is the norm rather than the exception. Seattle gets less annual rainfall than Dallas, and where I am north of Seattle we get about 10″ less annually than Seattle, about 26″. Most of that rain comes in the winter and fall months. In the summer, we average less than 1″ per month. If that aint drought…
Drought in Washington is more about snow pack than rain. The governor called the drought committee in February this year when the snowpack was only at about 70%.
Most big water systems (i.e. Seattle, Tacoma) rely on Cascade snow melt to keep the reservoirs full enough to last for the summer. Irrigators in Eastern WA also rely on reservoirs in the Cascades.
We had really good snow pack by late May and the governor sent the drought committee home thinking all would be well. The hot weather over the last week has resulted in a rapid melt off of the snow that should have trickled in over a longer period.
This caught a lot of water planners off guard and now the reservoirs have less water over the next two months than they thought.
Please send a modicum of you hot air to us here in the US Northeast
This has been nearly a summer without a summer — our warmest days of the calendar year were back in the late April early May time frame.
Recently it has become quite humid, and the temperatures are approaching “normal for the end of July” However air copnditioning equipment is already on “End of summer” sales
John F. Hultquist (15:59:30)
“OT: Why do folks write it’s for its? Please stop”
…unless it’s the contraction for it is!
android seasonal 2009 away 2008 imposed
I really have to wonder how accurate that junky thermometer is.
I have seen retail displays of those things and they will all have a different reading sitting in the same place.