Updated Mobile Cell/PDA WX Report

I'm pleased to provide a live weather feed for your cell phone or pda. For the purists, this does not create true WAP code, but rather HTML pages suitable for viewing in most cell phones. It's been tested with Blackberry, iPhone and Palm units. My expectation is that the feed will display equally well on other phones as well.

Included within the conditions page is the daily Tide Prediction.
Also new is a watch/warnings tab that will post local Kent County alerts.

Since these are HTML pages you can click and view them on your browser. This will give you some idea of what you'll see on your phone.

Click here to try it out. Mobile Cell/PDA

Rain & Temp Details

Two new reports added today:

Daily rain totals, by year, by month, by day Rain Detail

Daily Temperature Hi/Lo by year, by month, by day Temp Detail

I'm glad to have these in place prior to the start of the new year.

Both are in the Menu under Almanac

Weather Logo's

Added a few live weather logo's to the site. Feel free to display the current weather in Rock Hall, MD. by using one of my weather Logo's. Just select and copy the HTML code for the Logo of choice and paste it into your HTML editor.

Let me know if you decide to use one, I'll add you to my updates list should any changes be made.

I hope to be adding two more Logo's size 500x80 px and 500x60 px. Check back for these additions.

Weather Logo

METAR

Today I finished adding all of the METAR Stations for Maryland and Delaware.

METAR Stations

New Advisories Page

This new page will display warnings, watches, advisories and alerts that are provided by the ATOM XML/CAP 1.1 feeds from NOAA/NWS.

Included is a descriptive icon key popup.

The page is designed to check every 10 minutes for postings or updates.

BWS Advisories

Tide Clock

Added a new tide clock to the Swan Creek Tide page. The visual makes it easier to see the
expected change during the next few periods.

Old Guages vs New Data

If your liked the old Belcak.com home page, the new weather site can give you a similar look.

Try this link BWSRH Live you'll have a live display similar to the old site.

If this is your preference then don't forget to bookmark this page as the opening one for visiting BWSRH.com.

Let me know if you have any questions or problems.

New Domain Name

The new weather site is located at a new domain or address. The new domain is www.bwsrh.com.

If you can remember the first letters of "Belcak Weather Station Rock Hall" I'm hoping that remembering the new domain will be easy. BWSRH

Give it a try!

Steve

New Web Site

Well it's coming up on 4 years that the weather station and web site have been operational. I thought it might be time for a fresh look to the website with new features, data and capability.

Not only am I re-doing the site but I have registered a new domain name as well. The original site is still operational and will stay that way until I'm confident the new one is running well.

You can try my new site at New Belcak Weather Station .

If u find any problems, please let me know.

Thanks

Webcam Update

Well I'm trying another camera. You can see the page at BWS Webcam . I'll put the page in the menu drop downs after I'm sure it seems to be running well.

In the mean time, if u get a chance to look, let me know what u think

email

Web Cam Problems

Well I'm sorry to say that my webcam has failed again.....it looks like this time I'll need to get a new one rather than trying to keep making this one work.

Not sure when a new one will be back up and running.

Watch the Blog for any updates.

Thanks

Steve

Station Cleanup and Repair

This week I took the time to tear down the weather station integrated sensor suite and give it a good cleaning. It's been about 3 years since the last time it was done and the collection of dirt, spiders and debris left me concerned that the station would continue to perform well.

When the solar panel is not charging the system, backup is a small lithium 123A battery. Incredible as it may sound the battery was still acting as backup but installing a new one now would keep me from having to deal with replacement when conditions were less favorable.

All seemed to go well and my data quality reports look good.

Hopefully I'm good for another 3 years.

National Radar Image & Barometer Reading Incorrect

It was brought to my attention that the "National Radar Image" that's used on 4 of my pages was not updating anymore. My image source link seems to have stop working so now I'm linked to another image courtesy of Accuweather. Give it a try, all should be OK.

I'm also seeing that my barometric pressure is not updating.....not sure what is the cause, a bad sensor or perhaps a problem in the clientraw file that updates this info. Anyway I'll take a look and see if I can identify the problem.

Crabbing Today

Got a good lesson today, I called it Trotline 101.
Had a chance to get out this morning and for the first time see up close how locals crab using a trotline.
Today it was chicken necks and 1000' of line.
Location was the Chester River in front of the Chester River Country Club.
Started at 0730 and at 1130 we had just over a bushel of river crabs.
Great day and a good catch!

Tides - Weather Underground - Crabs

The tides page is back to it's old format....I had some difficulties with the tables and updates so until that get resolved I'll use the old format.

Today I stopped rapidfire updates and the NOAA weather radio Sudlersville, MD audio stream that I have been sending to Weather Underground. The NOAA weather report stream is still useable but I'm now serving the stream.

Good crab day today.....I had 13 nice size crabs for the pot.

Steve

New Hurricane Tracking Page

Introduced a new hurricane tracking page this morning. It's powered by hurricane tracking software from Stormpulse.

Make sure to read the "How To" material at the bottom of the page. It will give you all of the info you need to use the features in the map.

Forecast added to the Cell Phone information

Today I had a chance to add another page to our Cell Phone weather information. This Forecast page has the latest forecast information for Rock Hall, MD. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Updated Tide Prediction Page

Finished a re-layout of the Tide Prediction tab listed under the Marine drop down menu. Layout is now in table form with 21 days of tide projection.

Tide info added to cell phone page

Had a good suggestion to add tide info to the Cell Phone page - take a look at the data page wap.belcak.com and right after the Solar info I have inserted the daily tide info for Swan Creek, Rock Hall, MD
Hope you find it useful.

Crab Traps

4 more for the pot today.....

Cell Phone Forecast for Rock Hall now available

Us this link in your cell phone browser - wap.belcak.com - and you'll get detailed information of current weather from The Belcak Weather Station in Rock Hall, MD USA.
Notice that the opening page, on top and bottom, has a link to Weather Graphics This will give you current radar and webcam images directly on your phone.

Since I can't test all model phones, if it's not working well on your's, send me a message and let me know......hopefully I can make adjustments.

I have some more ideas for additions to this feature, check back often for the latest updates.

First Catch

Pulled our traps for the first time and had 8 nice size crabs for the pot!

Crab Traps

Later than usual, but today I put out 2 carb traps off the dock. Hopefully we'll get our share for the season......I'll let you know how we make out!

Storm July 31, 2009

It lasted just 10 minutes, I recorded 47 mph gusts with 38 mph sustained winds and it turned out to be the most destructive we've had in the 5 years we've lived here.

We had two large trees uprooted and 5 snapped in the middle.

You can see the pictures here July 31 Storm

Now the clean up will begin.

Live Webcam turned on!

Today I started to serve a live feed from a JVC TK-C700U color camera. The view is south across my backyard and onto the upper part of Swan Creek in Rock Hall, MD.

The camera is an old video surveillance model that feeds to an ATI Radeon 7500 video card. The capture software is Image Salsa .

The camera is operational from +/- 60 minutes of sunrise and sunset and it's presented on my web page using Adobe Flash.

The feed has a 5 minute timeout to save on bandwidth and requires a page refresh if you wish to view it longer.

Clear Sky Clock Page Added

To the Astronomy tab I have recently added the Clear Sky Clock page.

The Clear Sky Clock can show at a glance when, in the next 48 hours, we might expect clear and dark skies for one of many observing sites closest to Rock Hall, MD, in this case The United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD USA.

It's is intended for amateur astronomers. The forecast data comes from a numerical weather model run by the Canadian Meterological Centre.