We are back on line

2012-01-28 10:03:24.000 – Steve Welsh,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist

We’re back! Perhaps you noticed that the website stopped updating yesterday morning?

Luckily the reason for this was weather related rather than any major technical failures at this end. The storm that passed through yesterday brought some snow to start with before turning over to freezing rain in the morning as temperatures slowly rose. Unfortunately for us freezing rain forms glaze ice over everything it touches and within a couple of hours the microwave dish, our main link to the outside world, was encased in a hard coating of thick ice. Glaze ice, unlike the far more common (well at least up here) rime ice, is dense and strongly attenuates the microwave signal with the result that our connection to the valley office invariably drops out in these conditions and hence the reason for the website not updating.

We did managed to clear most of the ice off the dish yesterday afternoon but with temperatures hovering around the freezing mark and thick fog surrounding us the link stubbornly refused to connect. Now that we’re in the clear and the sun is falling on the dish the last remaining ice has dislodged and we’re back on line at last.

Steve Welsh,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist