I have a Tempest installed on the roof at my uncle’s store on the coast in Panama City Beach, FL. I’ve noticed that the wind gusts are typically higher than the surrounding stations for the majority of the time. The buoy PCBF1 recorded a PWG of 38mph and the highest PWG I could find so far is the FSU PC campus (WeatherSTEM Davis VP2) was 41mph. I do think WeatherFlow has a professional station not far from my Tempest station but I have no earthly idea what it recorded. Maybe someone on here can tell me. Hopefully my data isn’t caused by water being stuck in the wind gap. But other than that, it’s pretty cool to watch the station record these types of measurements.
The angled portion the building is going to cause a difference in speed as more air is pushed up towards the Sensor array.
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So I guess then the wind readings aren’t representative of the general area at that height?
Not with the roof line that close.
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Any chance you can put your Tempest on a taller mast?
Not really. A taller mast would increase the chances of vibrations to occur. I personally think the picture could be giving us a distorted view of the height.
That station is more inland. My station is just about on the beach. PCBF1 is the best reference IMO. Tyndall is another one. There isn’t many stations on the coast like mine down in PCB. So it’s hard to get a good comparison. I know some here think it’s too close to the roofline but the picture maybe giving us a distorted view (my cousin took the pic and sent it to me).
that close to the strongly angled roof is asking for strong turbulence. It might be slightly better if you were to put it in the center of the flat roof. Still not ideal.
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The way the roof is shaped, it wouldn’t be possible.
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Notice that you said “the majority of the time”. IMHO if it is not always reading higher then there is no problem with the Tempest itself but other factors are causing higher wind speeds in that area. Are the higher speeds normally during the day rather than at night? Is it higher at lower speeds also? So many things can affect it, roofs, surrounding buildings, vegetation, even traffic on nearby roads. Here is some info from Arizona University https://cals.arizona.edu/climate/ws/wx_station_siting.pdf
The lights in the sign will negatively affect the lightning sensor.
The majority of the time, I’ll would say it’s within 5mph. Sometimes 7mph difference. With most of it being higher. The bigger discrepancies are during strong/severe storms. I mainly use PCBF1 as the reference. I’m leaning to the idea that it’s not turbulence, but the geographical features in that area. So it’s microclimate in nature. I’m going down to the site this week and take some pics of the unit.
I could be wrong and these high PWGs are due to turbulence but it’s hard to know for sure when there are not many stations reporting right on the coast. If @dsj or anyone else on the @WFstaff, @WFsupport have any time to analyze the data, they might be able to tell me for sure. I know that they have a professional unit that isn’t far from the Tempest location.
I’m hoping it’s a microclimate situation and the data can be used for research purposes. I will say that the area where the station is located is breezy all the time. Not too many calm to light winds days.
For today, the PWG is 29mph and 28mph at PCBF1. Current winds are similar and blowing from the direction that turbulence would most likely to occur.
Check out this video to get an idea of what wind patterns are like around buildings.
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Thanks! @tony.mcgee looked at my data and it looks fine. He did tell me that the station could possibly catch some of the turbulence. But so far, it hasn’t caught any of the turbulence (as far as we know). The data is very representative when the wind is blowing from where turbulence would most likely happen. But other than that, it’s in a great spot to record some wild data without having vibration issues. But I do appreciate everyone’s input on here.
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