SLOweather

Friday I finally figured out how to run 2 separate audio streams from one computer. Now, along with the fire scanner stream, SLOweather offers an audio stream of NOAA’s weather radio transmitter KIH31, located up on Cuesta Peak.

The stream is currently in live testing at http://wx.sloweather.com/wxradio.php. If you have Media Player on your computer, the stream should start right up. I know this isn’t perhaps the best solution for everyone, as it may exclude non-Windows based computers and browsers. We’re working on another player.

Later I’ll get a link for the new weather radio page onto the SLOweather menus.

Please send your feedback on the new page to our Contact page. Don’t leave a comment here unless you are registered. Right now I have over 4,800 unregistered “comments’ to sort through, the vast majority of which are undoubtedly spam. It must be time to add a spam filter.

Sloweather recorded only 0.14″ of rain for the “storm” Monday night and early Tuesday morning. On the other hand, after the front went through, we had high winds, cold temperatures, and even colder wind chill, with gusts as high as 42 MPH, and wind chills down to 39 or so.

Weather like this isn’t uncommon for March in SLO. It was just a little over a year ago that we had snow 2 nights in a row, up on Cuesta Ridge.

The wireless link to the SLOweather cameras went down overnight, so they were off-line for a few hours I went to the site and reset the equipment so they are back on-line now. While I was there I cleaned the spring spiderwebs from the fronts of the enclosures, so the views should be a little clearer now.

Today is the Vernal Equinox, as the sun crosses the equator at 5:07 PM PDT today on its way north for the summer. Equinox means “equal night, and today is one of the 2 days of the year with equal hours of daylight and dark (the other being the Autumnal Equinox, the first day of Autumn).

At 6:35 AM Tuesday, 20 March 2007, SLOweather experienced a short, heavy downpour with larger than normal raindrops, and a little pea sized hail. The event lasted for about 5 minutes and totaled 0.01″ of rain.

It’s been a drier than normal winter, but the wildflowers are finally starting to pop in the Irish Hills.

Chocolate lilies on a hillside…

A ceanothus (thanks, Nate!)

California Poppies…

Western Redbud living up to its name…

and Violas, Johnny-jump-ups…

If you open the main SLOweather page, and then look at the button for that window down on the task bar (or above the window on a Mac), you should see the current temperature, updated every time the page updates.

Currently, this is the only page to which I’ve added this, but I’ll probably make it a part of the new SLOweather, coming soon.

As I previously noted, the start of Daylight Saving Time has been moved up this year by 3 weeks. So, even though it’s still winter, before bed tonight don’t forget to Spring Forward and set your clocks ahead an hour. Technically, the correct time to do so is 2AM Sunday morning, but I’m not staying up that late.

Just in time for spring and summer on the Central Coast, the latest version of my forecasting software adds UV predictions to the day time forecast.

Here it is in Monday’s forecast:

Partly to mostly sunny in the morning, becoming partly cloudy in the afternoon. High 75. UV index up to 6. Wind north around 3 mph in the morning, becoming west-southwest around 8 mph in the afternoon.

Note that, at this time, the UV forecast will only appear if the forecasted value is 5.5 or greater.

As you are probably aware, the dates that DST takes effect and ends in the US has changed this year. Formerly in effect from the 2 AM local time on the first Sunday in April until 2 AM on the last Sunday in March, DST now runs from the Second Sunday in March (the 11th this year), until the first Sunday in November (the 4th). That’s an increase of 4 weeks.

What you may not know is that Windows may or may not correctly do the DST change. Even Microsoft is warning people to pay close attention to appointments and other time-of-day related things for that 3 week period from the new effective date to the old one.

Here is a link to the MS Knowledge Base with info for updating XP and current server operating systems

If you have an older version of Windows, like 2000 Pro, ME, or 98, Microsoft will not update them for DST. You can check with Google for ways to change these computers with registry edits to use the new dates, or use links here to find updating tools for Windows 98 and 2000 Pro, as well as the various flavors of XP.