Fishersvillel Viirginia Weather Weather Help

Help, News, and Information

Looking for the news? Just CLICK HERE to go to the news page.

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Control Software: All station control is done with Virtual Weather Station software by Ambient.
Email Alerts: An email alert may be automatically sent on a schedule to anyone who might need "Current Weather Conditions" data in that way. Please use "Feedback" to request for more information about this service.
Equipment: The physical equipment used is an Oregon Scientific WM918 weather station. This is attached to an IBM E series 520 450meg Aptiva PC running Ambient's Virtual Weather Software under Windows 2000Pro. Additional summary reports are written in REXX. WINDMAIL is used to handle the email alerts. The PC is attached to the internet with a 100meg ethernet Netgear Hub router and DSL modem. DSL service is provided by nTelos.
Feedback: This site was created by and is managed by Jack Cameron and is a project of Fishersville.net Please send your comments about this site to Jack using the Feedback link at the bottom of the main page. I really appreciate hearing from you... both positive as well as negative comments, of course.
File Viewers: Several reports and charts are in either Acrobat or MS Word format. In order to view these files you must have previously installed the appropriate file viewer. Please visit the File Viewers page for more on file viewers.
Fishersville Town: The town of Fishersville is located in central Virginia in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley just East of Staunton and just West of Waynesboro and Charlottesville. You may be able to click HERE to view a MapQuest map. If not, go to MapQuest and use the ZIP code 22939 to obtain a map.
Fishersville Weather Station: This weather station is located in the Emerald Hills subdivision about one mile North of Rt 250 on Rt 608 at 38°-06'-42" N & 78°-57'-23"W. The station is located at an elevation of about 1350 feet above sea level and has an Easterly view of the Sky Line Drive. Temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors are mounted on the North side of our home, about 6 feet above ground level. The rain 'tipping bucket' is mounted about 3 feet from the lower roof line and about 8 feet above ground level. The wind sensors are attached to clear the highest roof peak by two feet. A few pictures of the station can be viewed by clicking HERE.
Getting Around: Navigation links have been made as simple as possible. Use the graphic tabs at the top of each primary page or the text links at the bottom of each primary page. There are only four primary pages represented by Home, Reports, Links, Photos, and Help. There is also a News link at the bottom of the home page. It is also possible to click on sections of the main broadcast image. For example, clicking on the webcam image at the lower right of the broadcast image will display the webcam page.

Main Page Window: A Three graphic displays are shown on the main page. On the left is the broadcast image. To the right are the temperature and barometric charts, each of which shows data for the last 10 days by hour; thus 240 hours in all. Click on one of these charts to display a page of additional charts. The broadcast image shows the most important data as well as a conditions icon (upper right of blue image). The conditions icon is an estimate of current conditions. This is done automatically, based on station data as well as data from station KSHD at the Shenandoah Airport in Weyers Cave, VA. You can also click on the small image at the lower right corner of the broadcast image to go to the webcam page.
Navigation: See "Getting Around"
News: Click HERE to go to the station news page or click on the [ News ] link at the bottom of the home page. You may also be able to click on the date in the news banner that sometimes shows just above the broadcase image on the home page.
Rain and Snow Winter Considerations: Effort is taken to separate rain and snow readings. Doing this often requires manual 'after the fact' data adjustment. Without this effort, snow melting in the rain 'tipping bucket' would be recorded as rain. However, the reading would be incorrect due to either sublimation of melting snow or would be noted well after the snow actually fell. Due to this problem, the rain gauge is either disconnected or covered during times of extended below freezing temperatures. At other times, melted snow readings are offset in the data to negate their effect. The result of this is that you must use the 'moisture' calculation from the Summary Tabular Reports to see what effect on moisture that the snow fall may have had. Moisture is computed using a 'private' formula that takes snowfall, temperature, humidity, wind, and actual rain (mixed precip) into consideration.
Software: Virtual Weather station 12.07 p52 is used as the station control software. Additional software includes REXX, Windmail, and FTP.
Special Reports: Some reports are done every few days or so, most of which are manual. In general, these are done using Lotus Approach. The final report or chart is then saved in either the Acrobat (.pdf) or MS Word format (.doc). See "File Viewers" for notes about viewing these formats on your PC. Many reports are also available that are not posted on this site. Please feel free to ask about getting data or a report that is not currently posted.
Tech Stuff: Please see "Equipment".

Terms and Conditions: This website, related data, and helpful links and information are provided only as an information service. Use of the data and information is done at your own risk. This station assumes no responsibility for the outcome of any action that may be taken based on the data and information obtained herein. This station is not responsible for the content of external web links contained here.

Weather Watcher Participation: The Fishersville weather station currently feeds data to WHSZ's (Ch3) Weather Lab and participates as one of their "weather watchers". WVIR (Ch29) may also use data from this station as part of their weather broadcast. However, they do not make public mention of such use.