I've just recently set up what I've called the "Forecast and Observation Archives" on my webpage. Basically, what it does is keeps an archive copy of the daily forecasts and model outputs, as well as weekly rainfall bulletins for the local area on my website. The process is completely automatic, so I don't have to remember to do anything everyday.

Link is here

I GOT TO GO HELP READ THE BOM POST OFFICE WEATHER STATION HERE THIS MORNING

The benefits of being in a small town.
Just spent a very interesting morning with the local post office operator/BOM weather observer for the Barcaldine Post Office.

I met up with her out the back of the post office and went into the fenced off area with the Stevenson screen. Inside the stevenson screen was the standard dry/wet bulb thermometers as well as a maximum thermometer and a minimum thermometer, also in the box was a book, ready to go with the boxes, etc. to be filled out.

The funniest part about it was watching how the min/max thermometers are reset, they are taken out of the stevenson screen and quickly dropped (still held in hand) towards the ground. We tend checked the sky, which was nearly completely clear except for one little bit of what is classed as "C11", which looked just like a little wispy bit of cirrus cloud.

The next part I found interesting was Wind Speed, as there is no wind recording equipment at the station, we basically just worked out the direction by where we could feel it coming from and the speed using the Beaufort scale, she said that the wind felt like a "Light Breeze". Once we got inside she looked at the scale she was given by the BOM which said to enter a "Light Breeze" in as 5 knots.
She told me that they used to have a kestrel for recording wind speed, but it stopped working and they didn't bother to get it replaced.

After the Observations were all recorded we went into the post office to a laptop. The Laptop and Modem had been supplied by the Bureau of Meteorology. The Laptop didn't have windows or anything on it, simply just a black screen with words and questions?
She turned it on and it said on the screen "Calling 1800 (something)", obviously connecting to the BOM, then it said "Connected to (some really long code).bom.gov.au". The first thing that came up was the choice of Observation Time, the choices were "Midnight, 3am, 6am, 9am, Midday, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm". After that the date had to be entered in the format of "06052012". The computer then asked if the observation time was correct. Then it asked to enter Wet and Dry Bulb temperatures, followed by choosing the wind direction from a drop down list and then entering the speed, then Visibility, the current weather, the current cloud conditions, rainfall obs, min/max temperatures and rain to 9am, then any final comments. After that she pressed finish and the modem dialled the phone number and sent the data in at 9:16am. I checked on my phone at 9:29am and the observations we'd just recorded were already listed on Weatherzone under the Central West district observations.

She told me that they actually get paid by the BOM to read the station. They pay more for the readings done at 9AM & 3PM, than for the reading she does at 6AM.
At 6am, the BOM asks her to just check the Dry/Wet Bulb Temps and the Wind.
At 9am, everything gets checked.
At 3pm, the Dry/Wet Bulbs, Max temp, Wind and Rain is checked.
As well as Cloud/Weather obs which are checked all the time.

Here's a picture of the page for the 9am observation this morning from the book inside the Stevenson screen that the observer has to fill out with each observation.

You wanna come and do the weather with me sometime??

You wanna come and do the weather with me sometime??

Meanwhile very sad to see Byrnsie finish up last week. He’s an absolute legend, and will be sorely missed by all. Was talking to one of his brothers at work on Friday, and he too is planning to retire very soon...

And that 3°C sounds a bit cold for me yet PDM, had enough trouble this morning and it was only 15°C. Need another month or so to acclimatise.

If a small group (up to 5) of weather nuts wanted to come one day and see how its done - let me know and will organise it, a Friday morning would be best. Weather is not read on weekends