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Photo by Edward Freundl
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Riverside Consign owner Jack Summers is seen next to a personal weather station he installed on the roof of his downtown store to collect data for the Weather Underground Web site. The top sensor measures wind speed and direction; below that is a temperature gauge, followed by three solar panels that power the entire setup; and at bottom is a precipitation gauge. Relative humidity is measured by another sensor at street level.
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The Weather Underground is alive and well and members can be found in several places in Washtenaw County, including Manchester.
Aside from sharing its name and beginnings on a college campus, the modern Weather Underground has a much more benign purpose than its 1960s counterpart consisting of violent student radicals.
These days, it's the world's largest network of private, personal weather stations connected to a central hub to provide current conditions and forecasting capabilities.
"There are thousands of personal weather stations. It's more accurate than The Weather Channel," said Jack Summers, owner of Riverside Consign in Manchester, who installed one of the stations on the roof of his downtown store in February.
It continuously collects a variety of meteorological information and uploads it to the store's Web site, www.riversideconsign.com, and from there links to the Weather Underground home page, www.wunderground.com.
Summers said he has been a member of Weather Underground for about 20 years.
When he discovered that there were few stations in this area, he wasted little time in setting up his own to share Manchester with the rest of the world.
"I've always had an interest in this and I said, 'I could do this.' There's a need for this," he said.
The nearest local weather stations are at the DaimlerChrysler Proving Grounds in Chelsea and in Clinton, Willis, and a couple in Ann Arbor. Beyond that, the closest one is near Reynolds Airport west of Jackson.
There are personal weather stations in every state and the U.S. Virgin Islands, plus more than 200 counties and territories worldwide.
There is relatively little expense in setting up a station, Summers said.
"I got the hardware kit for $225 off e-Bay," he said. "The software runs about $100; you can also get a personal version that doesn't upload to the Web for $35."
The software is called Virtual Weather Station, and it tracks a variety of data: temperature, barometric pressure, precipitation, humidity, wind speed and direction, wind chill and heat index.
The hardware consists of sensors, gauges, solar power cells and a display unit.
All you need is an open space for the sensors to properly collect the data.
"There are certain formulas you follow to determine how far away from trees and buildings you have to place the equipment," Summers said.
The sensors are mounted on the roof of his business, from which you can get a good look at the entire downtown area.
They are mounted on a simple tripod about 9 feet tall, with an arrow-style weather vane on top to register wind speed and direction, followed by temperature and humidity sensor and a rain gauge.
Solar cells that power the equipment are also located on the mast, and the barometric pressure sensor is down at street level.
Data comes in from the instruments to a receiver in Summer's office and sends it to a desktop computer.
"The computer always has to be on for the software to upload it to the main Weather Underground site," Summers said.
To see how it operates, visit the Web site www.riversideconsign.com, then scroll down to the "weather" link for local conditions plus a link to the full Weather Underground Web site.
Summers said the forecasts are updated every minute, and the sensors track conditions every two or three seconds.
"You can get graphical data on everything that it tracks that is stored from your start date," he said.
He said he was impressed when he recently saw for himself how quickly the system responded to threatening weather conditions.
"When we had a sudden deluge on March 14, it showed it was pouring down at a rate of five-eights of an inch an hour," he said.
"We ended up with about a quarter of an inch total, and you could see this huge cloud mass moving across the screen on the radar."
The software allows extra probes to be added, and Summers will take advantage of that.
"I've had requests to measure the River Raisin water temperature," he said. "Perhaps I'll do that in late spring."
Edward Freundl is a reporter for Heritage Newspapers. He can be reached at 428-8173 or efreundl@heritage.com.
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