TPSNR Weather Station
The Davis Instruments Weather Monitor II was originally purchased and installed at the Visitor's Center in either 2001 or more likely, 1996. No records have been located relevant to the installation, maintenance, or data handling.
In the spring of 2009 Docent Lou Adamo lead a mentor's training walk aimed to focus on the vareity of environments in the Reserve and their physical properties. He was struck that in his own training in 2008 almost nothing was said about the climate in the Reserve and it's relation to preserving the Torrey pine tree.
Docent Jeannie Smith and Ranger Martin Urbach introduced Adamo to the station's local data display and anemoneter. Adamo determined that the station was partially functioning, but did not have any system of automatic or manual data recording provided to it. The humidity sensor was not functioning, and the rain guage was not permanently installed and referenced to the horizontal plane, as required.
Docent Roger Isaacson provided a dedicated PC to record and report observations. Adamo integrated the system as it stood, and recommended that the system be refurbished.TPDS Directors approved refurbishing the system. All components were replaced with new, except the RS-232 digital interface to the PC. The software was updated to the latest version of Davis' WeatherLink.
The new sensors were reinstalled by Adamo and Docent Stu Smith. The temperature-humidity sensor was relocated from a small window niche in the docent's storage room to a position under the porch roof outside the storage room, to improve ventilation and shade, and reduce the thermal influence of the adobe building on the observations. In 2010 Smith re-installed the temperature humidity sensor in a radiation shield to further reduce the thermal influence of the adobe structure. As a condition for participation in the San Diego Mesonet, the temperature-humidity package was relocated to the anemometer mast..
The anemometer was replaced on the same antenna mast at the NE corner of the building, as it had been orginally installed. Since the original installation, a young Torrey pine has volunteered, and grown up alongside the building and mast. A higher position on a more rigid mast would improve the wind observations. Since the mast carries communication signals, any changes would have to be authorized by DPR. Approval is now in place to increase the height and stiffness of the anemeter mast.
The rain guage is mounted and leveled on a board bolted to several concrete blocks. The blocks are placed on a slip-sheet, which in turn is placed on the flat roof of the Visitor's Center, per the roofing contractor's instructions, to protect the roof the the historic Torrey Pines Lodge, our Vistor Center and Museum.
The original Dell 700 computer has been swapped with an Intel Celeron E3300 dual-core machine operating at 2.50GHz, at the time the WeatherLink software was replaced with Ambient's Virtual Weather Station software at the beginning of February, 2011.