The Walterville Weather Station is located in the small town of Walterville, OR which is about 5 miles east of Springfield and 13 miles east of I-5. The station is at an elevation of 580 feet and is within the McKenzie River valley.
Located near the north edge of the valley and its steeply rising terrain, the station's wind exposure is limited. The greatest exposure is to the southwest and east through southeast.
The weather station is a Davis Instruments Vantage Pro wireless system. The system consists of an outdoor unit called the Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS) and an indoor console.
The ISS contains the wind, temperature, humidity, precipitation and solar radiation sensors. The temperature and humidity sensor are located in a fan-aspirated radiation shield. The barometric pressure sensor is located in the console.
The console is located inside the house 500 feet from the ISS. The console communicates across RS232 to a server which collects the data, processes it and stores it in a database.
Data are pulled from the Vantage Pro every 2.5 seconds and are archived every 10 minutes. The server also receives real-time data from 3 other sources: the PV-based solar power system, the house solar thermal energy system, and the house energy usage monitor.
On the local network, weather charts and textual displays are updated every 2.5 seconds. On the web, information is either updated on demand or at 10 minute intervals.
The server runs FreeBSD with ZFS, and the Apache2 web server. All of the software is written in Perl with 5 daemons collecting the real-time data. The charts are generated using the Perl GD package and displayed locally using Perl/Tk on the dedicated displays and using Firefox on the general use displays.
The station has been in operation at its current location since November 2002. It was made accessible from the web at this location during September 2004. Its predecessor was The Parrett Mt. Weather Station, which was retired after 22 years of service, 12 years accessible from the web, when we moved from Sherwood, OR to its current location.
Return to the Weather Station's Home Page