Weather Station
This site is driven by observations from a WeatherFlow Tempest personal weather station and a PurpleAir air quality sensor located at Sharp Park Beach in Pacifica, CA. The Tempest is mounted 6 feet up a pole on the peak of my roof. The ground elevation is approximately 10 feet, the peak of the roof is approximately 28 feet above ground, providing a total elevation of approximately 45 feet. The PurpleAir is mounted under the roof eaves. The homepage is automatically updated in real time (every 3 seconds for wind, every minute for the rest).
Pacifica Webcams
There are three webcams co-located with the weather station. While these weather pages use static images from the webcams, there are full 4K 24fps video streams available. For more information visit the Pacifica Live Cameras page.
All weather observations are also posted to the following websites:
- 28304 on tempestwx.com
- KCAPACIF205 on Weather Underground
- AE6DC-5 on CWOP/APRS
- f05c6c57 on Windy.com
- SHARPPARKBEACH on PWSweather.com
- AV684 and AE6DC-5 on MesoWest and other MADIS-fed sites
AQI Information
I've removed my description of the AQI numbers because right now I'm not displaying the AQI on my weather page. The PurpleAir I was using has died. This is the third PurpleAir that has died. My suspicion is it doesn't really like the salt air. If I decide to replace it yet again, I'll restore the AQI information I had here.
APRS Radio Transmissions
The weather observations are also being transmitted locally on ham radio via APRS on 144.390MHz. The packets are beaconed every 10min direct and every 20min via NCA2-1 (similar to WIDE2-1). The weather station, the Raspberry PI which drives the APRS, and the radio transciever are all battery and solar backed. They should continue to operate and provide observations in the event of power and/or internet outages.
Software used:
- weewx weather station software
- HighCharts for the various charts on the website
- The Belchertown skin theme built for weewx
- MQTT as the broker for instant data transfer from weather station to website
- Direwolf for the APRS via radio
Credits:
- Forecast data from Aeris Weather
- Earthquake data from USGS.gov Earthquake Catalog Developer API
- Tidechart data from TidesPro
- Wave summary data from The National Data Buoy Center
- Air quality from PurpleAir
AQI Links:
- KQED article: Making Sense of Purple Air vs. AirNow
- Josh Hug, Professor at UC Berkeley: Understanding PurpleAir vs. AirNow.gov