Observing details at the Otter Valley Weather Station

 

Daily at 09:00 (GMT & BST)

 

Temperature:

Readings are taken manually from Met Office sheathed minimum and maximum thermometers housed in a Stevenson Screen positioned 1.25 metres above grass. These are then reset.

 

Humidity:

A wet & dry bulb hygrometer gives humidity readings, these are noted and relative humidity is calculated using a slide rule or the humidity calculator.

 

Rainfall:

A standard 5" Casella rain gauge is checked for rainfall during the last 24 hours.

 

Pressure:

A pressure reading is taken from a digital barometer.

 

Grass temperature:

A minimum overnight grass temperature is noted and the thermometer reset.

 

Soil temperatures:

Readings are taken using soil thermometers at depth of 10, 30 & 100 cm.

 

Daily at 22:00 (GMT & BST).

 

Sunshine:

A reading is taken of the total sunshine for the day and the display reset to zero. Also one minute interval data sets are produced via an ADC-16 data logger which are uploaded to a computer and total sunshine is calculated by using a spreadsheet.

 

AWS:

Data from a Davis Vantage Pro+ 2 Automatic Weather Station (AWS) is uploaded to a computer and incorporated into a spreadsheet along with the manual recordings made at 09:00 & 22:00 on that day. The AWS provides continuous 5 minute data sets for temperature, rainfall, wind speed and direction, humidity, dew point, UV, solar radiation and air pressure, grass and soil temperatures.

 

Monthly:

All the weather monitoring data collected is then used to produce a monthly report which is submitted to the Climate Observers Link and also uploaded to this website.