MADIS gives WBRV two thumbs up!

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WBRV received it's MADIS rating this week and we are pleased to say that we received two thumbs up for our data. Lots of criteria are used to determine a station's accuracy, including comparing it's data to the data of other nearby stations. For us that includes, in addition to the other Huntington County weather stations, the weather station at Baer Field International Airport where they have more sophisticated weather equipment. So we are very excited that our data is considered to be accurate.

Here is some information on the MADIS Program:

The Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) is dedicated toward making value-added data available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Global Systems Division (GSD) for the purpose of improving weather forecasting, by providing support for data assimilation, numerical weather prediction, and other hydrometeorological applications.

Quality Control (QC) of MADIS observations is also provided, since considerable evidence exists that the retention of erroneous data, or the rejection of too many good data, can substantially distort forecast products. Observations in the ESRL/GSD database are stored with a series of flags indicating the quality of the observation from a variety of perspectives (e.g. temporal consistency and spatial consistency), or more precisely, a series of flags indicating the results of various QC checks. Users of MADIS can then inspect the flags and decide whether or not to ingest the observation.

One WBRV page can be found at http://weather.gladstonefamily.net/site/search?site=D3241 and another at http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?&call=DW3241&last=24

The first page reports on the quality control checks performed by MADIS. The MADIS rating reports on the percentage of observations that pass the MADIS checks. We are told to aim for two thumbs up.

And speaking of weather...today's weather is oppressive. The outside temperature is currently 89 degrees, but the heat index is a suffocating 98 degrees. The wind is currently averaging about 9 mph, and we have had some gusts of up to 23 mph.

Bonnie worked in her garden today but the heat got to her and she had to come in. Kathy decided to mow because the crabgrass around the cottage was so high we could not find our dogs in it. So she mowed around the cottage for about two hours before coming in to take a shower and cool down. A nap and a good book sound really good to her. The new mower worked great, even in the tall grass.

Bonnie purchased an Ossian ham yesterday and cooked up some new red potatoes and fresh green beans with it and made a delicious meal.

In her first week of retirement, in addition to signing up for a class at IPFW, Bonnie made a batch of Kosher dills and a batch of bread and butter pickles. We have tried the Kosher pickles and they are really good.

The pets are doing well. Most are napping. The basement stays at a very constant 72 degrees, making for a nice temp for Millie, Gizmo and Gennie.

We celebrated Bonnie's retirement Thursday at Cork 'n Cleaver with Judy, Diane, Lani and Andrea. The food and company were great. Bonnie seems to have taken very well to retirement!