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.