In this blog I will propose a fire weather index for PWSs. The goal is to get fuel parameters out of the equation. This means that species, litter type or geography, will not play a role as they do in the Canadian FWI. As such, it connects with a recent new development described by Goodrick et.al. 2 .
I will describe the Canadian FWI as it appears in (scientific) literature. The basic reason for describing this complex fire-weather index is, that it is heavily used in some big countries, notably Canada, France, Australia and New Zealand and that the description of the method of calculation is not readily available.
The FWI also has been introduced in 2007 [1] as the method to assess the fire danger level in a harmonized way throughout Europe.
Some extensive studies have been made, to measure its performance and its relevance. FWI also contains most parameters relevant to estimating the danger level of the weather in relation to nature fires. In short: the FWI is an important tool for estimating and studying fire weather and fire spreading, with a huge knowledge base spanning almost 100 years. Continue reading
An example for this top10 approach you will find on the weather site.
As a variation to existing top10 lists, I wrote a small program (in C) which reads dayfile.txt from Cumulus once per day just after midnight and for selected measurements it creates a sorted top10-list. From that list it creates a HTML-table and writes that to a text-file. That file can be included by the user on a website wherever he wants simply by a PHP-include (which is the easy way to include I think).
For amateur meteorologists it is not always easy to calibrate their equipment, unless you yourself are working at a meteorological service or know people who do, it can be difficult to get the readouts correct within the limits of error of the weather station. I described this already a short time ago.
So now I have this new UT330C. I bought it in China and it arrived pretty fast (11 days). It measures temperature, humidity and pressure within reasonable error limits: Continue reading
The Davis Vantage PRO 2+, the hardware which forms the basis of the PWS De Wilgen is not a measurement device without flaws. As any measuring device – a thermometer, hygrometer etc… – it requires calibration and a calibration needs to be checked regularly. I use two types of calibration.
Yesterday I wrote a blog about the high temperatures in the Netherlands and the breaking of all existing temperature records. Today it continued and for the first time ever, temperature in the Netherlands rose above 40 °C. First time ever means since formal measurement began in 1901 and even since historical measurement series spanning almost 300 years.
It was a memorable day from a local meteorological point of view and this will continue until Saturday if the predictions are right. But because already many records were broken I make a note.
Please note, that this blog is one in a series culmination in an argument for a new Fire Weather Index for Personal Weather Stations developed by me. The articles in this blog often are not standalone but related. To appreciate this please check out the tags FWI or pwsFWI (more specific).
The Ångström index and the FMI index are highly similar indices in understanding, functioning and behaviour using only two meteorological parameters: temperature and humidity.
These indices are interesting because they are historically important, they are still in use and because, in discussing these indices, they shed some light on the understanding of the what and how of trying to understand estimating fire weather danger. Continue reading
One of the practical applications of meteorology is the objectivation of nature fire risks on the basis of different meteorological parameters (actual or from the past). Rainfall, humidity, temperature and windspeed are typically parameters to calculate a number indicating the risk on nature fire.