MesoWest Information for BALW2 in Ballard, WV, United States Of America (site inactive)
The following information is known about BALW2. If you think that any information is incorrect,
then please follow the instructions for correcting that data item.
It is possible that this page will report a problem where no problem exists. If you believe that
this has happened, then please contact me (address at the bottom of this page) and explain clearly
why you think this page is in error. Note that any changes that you make may take a few days to show up here, so
please give it a week before commenting.
Latitude: 37° 28' 30" N (deg min sec), 37.4750° (decimal), 3728.50N (LORAN) Longitude: 80° 45' 42" W (deg min sec), -80.7617° (decimal), 08045.70W (LORAN) Elevation: 658 metres (2159 feet) -- validated against 657 metres (2156 feet) from Google Location: Ballard, WV, United States Of America County: Monroe, WV
Data provider: IFLOWS
Forecast Office: Roanoke (RNK)
The site location should be at the mark shown -- or very close. Clicking within the map area (or you can drag the 'BALW2' marker) will display the latitude/longitude of that point.
If the displayed location (or elevation) of the weather observing location is incorrect, please drag the marker to the right location (or click in the right location), and then send the updated information.
Please note that we are trying to spot either the Stevenson Screen (or equivalent) or the location where the barometric readings are taken.
Can you help with location quality? Please indicate
if the marker on the map points at the weather instrument cluster:
The location information for this site was gathered from 1 data source. The source which most closely matches the consensus is chosen. Many of these sources
only report the location to the nearest minute (or hundredth of degree). This can lead to the marker being placed noticeably incorrectly. Please see Discussion of Location Errors for more information.
Show location history.
Date
Latitude
Longitude
Elevation
Name
2016-05-03
37.4750
-80.7617
658
Ballard, WV, United States Of America
The position of the clicked point on the map is:
The position of the 'BALW2' marker on the map is:
Latitude: dummy (deg min sec), dummy (decimal), dummy (LORAN)
Longitude: dummy (deg min sec), dummy (decimal), dummy (LORAN)
Estimated elevation is dummy metres (dummy feet) from dummy.
Location is dummy (reverse geocoded).
Move marker to new address.
There are no photographs of the station. If you have pictures of this location,
then please email them to balw2@photo.gladstonefamily.net.
Picture Submission
There are two ways to submit pictures. If you are a flickr user, then see the flickr section below. Otherwise you can simply email the pictures as follows:
If you use a smartphone that embeds the GPS coordinates in the pictures, then you can send any picture of a weather station to gps@photo.gladstonefamily.net and it will be associated with the correct station automatically.
Flickr Upload
Uploading picktures to flickr.com is easy. If you do not have a free flickr account, then you need to create one. Just go to flickr and click the 'Create your account' button. You can use a google account if you have one.
Once logged in, click on 'Upload Photos & Video'. Next click on 'Choose Photos and Videos', and walk through the process to upload your pictures. They will automatically be resized appropriately.
After the upload is complete, it will ask you to add titles, tags and descriptions. The key step is to add tags as follows:
wxtagged -- this indicates that this picture is of a weather station or surrounding area
wx:id=balw2 -- this indicates the site of which this is a picture
wxstation -- add this tag if the picture includes the weather station.
If you had to create your account, then you must upload at least five pictures. It will also take longer for your pictures to appear (a week or so). Otherwise, the pictures should appear after 24-48 hours.
You can try to find photographs from the area surrounding the site marker by clicking on Find nearby photographs.(There are some)(There are none)(There may be some)(Automatically loaded if any)
Status: Status: None found.
Clicking on the map above will redo the search centered on the clicked point.
Status: 3 found.
If any images are of the weather station, then please click on those images, and add the 'wxtagged' and 'wx:id=BALW2' tags to those images. For the station itself, please add the 'wx:station' tag as well.
Some users do not permit other users to add tags to their images. In these cases, just add a comment to the picture asking the photographer to add the tags themselves.
Clicking on the map above will redo the search centered on the clicked point.
You can try to find photographs from the area surrounding the selected point by clicking on Find nearby photographs.
By default, the longer analysis periods display graphs that show the long term performance of this station.
The graphs show the mean error over time, and include error bars which are one standard deviation long. This provides
an easy way to see if there are any underlying trends in the data. Note that a 'step' in your data does not (necessarily) mean that
something happened to your station. It could mean that another station came online in the local area, and they are changing
the analysis.
The analysis is performed by MADIS. This web page just provides visualization
of the data that MADIS produces. There are a number of very knowledgeable people who participate on the
WXQC Mailing List
who do understand exactly how MADIS works and can resolve issues when the analysis seems to be broken. However,
in most cases, the station readings are at fault, or the software that is transmitting the data to CWOP.
Please check those paths first.
NOTE: If the error above is POSITIVE, then it means that the analysis temperature is HIGHER than the reported temperature.
This means that your sensor is reading COLDER than expected.
MADIS rating
You can choose the graph to be displayed by choosing one of the underlined 'worst' readings above. This will show you the graph for the day when this event happened.
Comparison graph for day marked in bold above:
It appears that your station is sited near the edge of a large urban area. This causes the analysis values to be lowered than expected as the quality control system does not take the location of the urban area into account.
The wind vector is the average wind over the relevant period. Note that if the wind blows North for half the time at 2 knots, and then blows South for the other half of the time at 2 knots, then the result is zero -- i.e. North wind and South wind will cancel out.
Over time, the direction of the wind and of the analysis should match pretty well. If the lengths of the vector are different, then it could mean either that your anemometer reads high or low, or that you are in a more shielded or more open space.
MADIS rating
Today
Last 7 days
Neighboring Stations
This is a list of stations that are close to this station.
Note that this is not the list of stations
that are used in the data analysis. That list of stations is known only to MADIS.
You can see all the stations at MADIS Data Display. Your station should be in the middle of the display.
If you think that the analysis is incorrect, then maybe one of the close stations has failed.
You can look at those for comparison purposes.
The average difference between your station and each station below is listed as well. This may allow you to detect local
stations which are erroneous. You can also use these numbers to adjust your instruments -- especially if a number of ASOS stations
have similar differences to your station. Also, try increasing the analysis period to more than the default 28 days.
The difference is only given if both stations report reasonably often during each day. Some stations
only report every 6 hours, and this makes the average of less interest. In this case, the average is not displayed.
The values reported are the differences between this station and the neighboring station. I.e. if the difference is positive, then this station is reading higher than the neighboring station.
Since this station has not been reporting continuously during the analysis period (it missed 16 days out of 28), the offsets below may not be accurate.
LEWISBURG, WV, US (lat 37.8658°, long -80.4798°, altitude 630 metres)
Quality Control Notes
This page reports on the quality control checks performed by MADIS. The green check mark and red cross are chosen based
on the average performance during the analysis period (which is selectable above). The red cross can appear even if
MADIS reports that all observations pass the MADIS QC checks.
The 'MADIS rating' reports on the percentage of observations that pass the MADIS checks. You should aim for two thumbs up!
Location Formats
The location is shown in three different formats. Each of these is used in some software, and is shown on some websites.
Overall website comments, problems etc to Philip Gladstone Page layout last modified Sunday, 28 February 2016
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