Thursday 24 December 2009

Tracking weather


I generally like to know what the weather is about to get up to. As I am effectively a small scale farmer, the weather forecast, and rain forecast in particular, is valuable information. However the Brisbane forecast is for a large region, complicated by all the mountainous/hilly areas and the impacts from the coast. For the most part, I am interested in what is happening around the Maculata Grove property, not so much about what is happening in the Brisbane CBD or other locations.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has a fantastic web page which shows output from the Mt. Stapylton Radar site. This includes information about current rain and even wind. If there is rain forecast and I need to do an outside activity which is best not done in the rain, then I will visit the following web page:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR664.loop.shtml?looping=1&reloaded=0&topography=true&locations=true&range=true&waterways=true&roads=true&rail=true

The above link is for the 64km range from the radar site and has a number of map features enabled. The 64 km range from the Mt. Stapylton Radar site gives me greater detail than the 128 or 256 km web pages. The enabled map features allows me to better see where the property is located and also allows me to see the impacts of things like the D'Aguilar Range on rain.

There is also a link for the Doppler wind data. I have not used this link much as I only recently realised it existed. However the next time we get a strong westerly I will make a point of having a look. This link is for a 128 km range from the radar site (I am not sure how I can change the range) with the same map features enabled:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR66I.loop.shtml?looping=1&reloaded=0&topography=true&locations=true&range=true&waterways=true&roads=true&rail=true

Hopefully this information will be of value to those living in the SEQ region. For those living in other areas of Australia, you will find that the additional map feature information in the link address (i.e. ?looping=1&reloaded=0&topography=true&locations=true&range=true&waterways=true&roads=true&rail=true) will work for other radar stations. You can disable map features by changing the true to false, or removing the "&=true|false" completely from the link.

2 comments:

  1. Hello neighbour! We have a OneWire weather kit in Samsonvale and feed our info to BOM (I believe - check it out).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Jodie
    Thanks for the neighbourly comment. :)
    I would love to hear more about your set up. Any plans to do a post about it on your blog?
    Cheers,
    Jason.

    ReplyDelete