My project this week.

2008-02-04 21:35:54.000 – Steve Welsh,  IT Observer

Midday Today

Early this morning we finally cleared out of the freezing fog. After days of looking at a wall of grayness it has been really nice to see the surrounding mountains and valleys once again. The clouds today also really added to the views, especially the low undercast which was covering some of the nearby valleys. The sunrise was good but the sunset was spectacular. Looking at the most recent weather maps it will probably be the last views we get this week as a low pressure system is set to move in soon.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week working on a project to record cloud heights, as measured by a ceilometer located in the valley, into a database for later analysis. A ceilometer is a piece of equipment that fires short pulses of light, from a laser diode, up into the sky. If the light encounters aerosols or moisture some of it will be scattered back down. The ceilometer measures the time taken for this back scattered light to arrive and hence can deduce the height of any clouds overhead. It’s been really interesting to see the heights of the cloud bases around us, especially when we are right in the middle of them.

Steve Welsh,  IT Observer