Hi

As you all know, I have developped a new version of the
transparency forecast which is now including smog. I was waiting for
feedback or smog episode over Montreal to ajust the forecast. We had only
one episode so far where I downgraded the effect... and no feedback.
Looking at long range forecast... well the smog will stay south of the
border for the next week or two. I need feedback and soon, because my
vacation starts in one week.

The new transparency-smog forecasts are now available on my web site at
the buttom section of this link...

http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/htmls/transparence_e.html

For all the users living in eastern U.S. I will appreciate to have
feedback from you this week (if possible), to adjust this new forecast.

Spread the news and I wish you all a good summer!


Thanks!

                                     *               *
                                                         _~~~~~~~
Allan Rahill                             *     *      *(     )
                                                    ~~-(__   )
Centre meteorologique Canadien                  * (____ CMC )
Canadian Meteorological Center, Dorval, Canada     (_______)
                                                       ////
ASTRO-METEO-WEATHER                                   '''
http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/htmls/mainpage.html      '''
Attilla web page
http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk

Allan Rahill wrote:

>Hi
>
>As you all know, I have developped a new version of the
>transparency forecast which is now including smog. I was waiting for
>feedback or smog episode over Montreal to ajust the forecast. We had only
>one episode so far where I downgraded the effect... and no feedback.
>

Attilla already added the forcast to the clock (way to go).

Now I was expecting the +smog forecast to match or be lighter (less
transparent) since I was
expecting the old transparency forecast being an upper bound to the
"+smog" forecast. But
I am looking at the Toronto clock right now (2003-07-14 monday starting
at 12)  and I see some
hours where the "+smog" forecast is more transparent (now there are more
hours
where the +smog is less transparent but still). What's going on? Is it
that both forecasts aren't done at the same time, a software bug or I am
a few
clues short of a full deck?

--- In AstronomyWeather@yahoogroups.com, Patrice Scattolin
<scattol@v...> wrote:

Yeh. I think will confuse a lot of people.

It's because the trans+smog forecast and the transparnecy
forecast are likely to be very different ages when you compare
them.

Particularly if you look at a clock in the middle afternoon
(most poplular time according to my log files).

You'll be comparing transparency forcast blocks from a forecast
only a few hours old (89% accurate) vs a forecast that was
generated last night and is about 12+ hours old -- quite a bit
less accurate.

So we simply cant assume that the differences between transparency
and trans+smog is simply due to smog.

Bummer. (technial term)

I'm trying to convince Allan that a possible solution is to create
a smog-only forecast. That way it wont get compared with
transparency -- I hope.


> Now I was expecting the +smog forecast to match or be lighter (less
> transparent) since I was
> expecting the old transparency forecast being an upper bound to the
> "+smog" forecast. But
> I am looking at the Toronto clock right now (2003-07-14 monday
starting
> at 12)  and I see some
> hours where the "+smog" forecast is more transparent (now there are
more
> hours
> where the +smog is less transparent but still). What's going on? Is
it
> that both forecasts aren't done at the same time, a software bug or
I am
> a few
> clues short of a full deck?

attilladanko wrote:

>--- In AstronomyWeather@yahoogroups.com, Patrice Scattolin
><scattol@v...> wrote:
>
>Yeh. I think will confuse a lot of people.
>
>It's because the trans+smog forecast and the transparnecy
>forecast are likely to be very different ages when you compare
>them.
>

I suspected that something like that might be happening. Indeed, as XV
used to say, "Bummer"

>I'm trying to convince Allan that a possible solution is to create
>a smog-only forecast. That way it wont get compared with
>transparency -- I hope.
>
I think that in the end, we will just want the "+smog" forecast anyways
so it
might not be worth the effort to have a separate smog forecasts. It might
mean that some transaprency forecasts (say 12:00 UTC) would use slightly
older smog data
and not be the most accurate. Ok some of the mixed together
data isn't all consistent but you can stuff that in the fine print.

There is a temporary problem with the domain cleardarksky.com
But here is a temporary workaround to see the clock images.

1. Find the url you usually use to look at the legend page of a clear
sky clock.
     it will look like:

     http://cleardarksky.com/c/<something>key.html

2. edit or retype the url until it looks like:

     http://66.78.6.237/~cleardar/c/<something>csk.gif


example:

     The url for the Montreal clear sky clock legend page was:

      http://cleardarksky.com/c/Montrealkey.html

      to see the clock today, use:

      http://66.78.6.237/~cleardar/c/Montrealcsk.gif


Note: This workaround just shows you the clock image. I'm still
     working on recovering the legend pages.
Note: As of 14:22 EDT today i've only updated 350 out of 1624 clocks.
     So this workaround may show you an old clock. That too is
     temporary.

Attilla Danko
danko AT magma DOT ca

There is a temporary problem with the domain cleardarksky.com
But here is a temporary workaround to see the clock images.

1. Find the url you usually use to look at the legend page of a clear
sky clock.
     it will look like:

     http://cleardarksky.com/c/<something>key.html

2. edit or retype the url until it looks like:

     http://66.78.6.237/~cleardar/c/<something>csk.gif


example:

     The url for the Montreal clear sky clock legend page was:

      http://cleardarksky.com/c/Montrealkey.html

      to see the clock today, use:

      http://66.78.6.237/~cleardar/c/Montrealcsk.gif


Note: This workaround just shows you the clock image. I'm still
     working on recovering the legend pages.
Note: As of 14:22 EDT today i've only updated 350 out of 1624 clocks.
     So this workaround may show you an old clock. That too is
     temporary.

Attilla Danko
danko AT magma DOT ca

Slightly off topic but thought I would spread the news of a fellow
club member's loss.

Please see the link below for details.

http://www.taas.org/stolen_starmaster/

- Sincerely

Shannon Mann

Hi all,
I have a set of seeing observations that I would like to correlate to
meteorological conditions. I used to live close to an airport where a
weather balloon is released twice daily, so I have a large set of data
with temperature, wind, humidity etc. I don't know much about
meteorology, but I was thinking to estimate in some way the turbulence
from wind shear at various heights. Is there a formula for calculating
this? I have the wind speed, direction and temperature at several
heights through the column of air.
Jon Kristoffersen

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Attilla Danko wrote:

>
>
> > Hi Allan,
> >
> > Thanks for restarting the transfer job on Pollux.
> >
> > But I though you might want to know that the 12Z forecasts have still not
appeared.
> >
> > Fortunately, tonight's 00Z forecasts have appeared and I am now downloading
them.
>
> Wups. I was mistaken. My downloader was running but it wasnt downloading the
00Z run for
> tonight.
>
> Its 2:37am. The 00Z run has still not updated.  In the past, when it's been
this late, It's never updated
> at all.
>
> I thought you'd like to know.
>
> -ad
>

Good morning Attilla

Well.... I checked and all images were produced last night. I have just
transfered them to the web site and I saw all transfer commands
running on my screen... but still nothing on the web site. I have the
impression the problem is the server and did a change yesterday and they
didn't tell me about it. I will find out this morning and keep you in
touch!


                                     *               *
                                                         _~~~~~~~
Allan Rahill                             *     *      *(     )
                                                    ~~-(__   )
Centre meteorologique Canadien                  * (____ CMC )
Canadian Meteorological Center, Dorval, Canada     (_______)
                                                       ////
ASTRO-METEO-WEATHER                                   '''
http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/htmls/mainpage.html      '''
Attilla web page
http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk

We experienced a problem with the astro-weather-meteo web site for the
last 24 hours and it is now fixed. The problem was related to a migration
of the web site http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/htmls/mainpage.html
to a new computer but there were no allocations to copy new files on this
server. I had to wait CMC "system group" to fix this glitch for CMC
external web site. It was fixed at 13h30 eastern local
time. New clear sky clocks updates should be available soon.

Clear skies!
                                     *               *
                                                         _~~~~~~~
Allan Rahill                             *     *      *(     )
                                                    ~~-(__   )
Centre meteorologique Canadien                  * (____ CMC )
Canadian Meteorological Center, Dorval, Canada     (_______)
                                                       ////
ASTRO-METEO-WEATHER                                   '''
http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/htmls/mainpage.html      '''
Attilla web page
http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk

I've been thinking about creating a highly simpfied version
of some clear sky clocks that could be used by webbrowsing
cell phones. I.e. a WAP version of the clocks.

I'm curious to know how many people might actually use a
cell-phone version of the clear sky clocks (especially
as cellphone companies like to charge extra for data).

Let me know yay or nay.

attilla danko
danko@...

Yay, but I rather be able to download it onto my Palm versus a
cellphone.  I've tried using the Avantgo service but the graphic is just
too small.  It would be nice to have a simplified version for all mobile
users, cell phone or PDA.

Randy
-----Original Message-----
From: Attilla Danko [mailto:danko@...]
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 5:02 PM
To: AstronomyWeather@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [AstronomyWeather] question to clear sky clock users: WAP
clocks?

I've been thinking about creating a highly simpfied version
of some clear sky clocks that could be used by webbrowsing
cell phones. I.e. a WAP version of the clocks.

I'm curious to know how many people might actually use a
cell-phone version of the clear sky clocks (especially
as cellphone companies like to charge extra for data).

Let me know yay or nay.

attilla danko
danko@...




Yahoo! Groups Links

To visit your group on the web, go to:
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AstronomyWeather/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
  AstronomyWeather-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

I don't expect to get a web browsing cell phone any
time soon.



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus

Attilla Danko wrote:

>I've been thinking about creating a highly simpfied version
>of some clear sky clocks that could be used by webbrowsing
>cell phones. I.e. a WAP version of the clocks.
>
>
I've talk to some friends and it looks like WAP phones essentially died.
The up and coming thing is combos PDA-Phone or BlackBerries (there
aren't any that I can tell at Telus and Bell).

http://www.telusmobility.com/qc/pcs/samsung_sph_i700.shtml
http://www.telusmobility.com/qc/pcs/blackberry_6750.shtml

http://www.bell.ca/shop/application/commercewf?origin=noorigin.jsp&event=link(br\
owseCellphone)&SUB_CATEGORY=Postpaid
http://www.bell.ca/shop/application/commercewf?origin=browse_cellphone.jsp&event\
=link(productDetail)&wlcs_catalog_item_sku=59040&toGoEvent=submitFromDetail
http://www.bell.ca/shop/application/commercewf?origin=browse_cellphone.jsp&event\
=link(productDetail)&wlcs_catalog_item_sku=59714&toGoEvent=submitFromDetail

http://www.fido.ca/portal/product/handsetdetail.jsp?id=erics_t616&lang=en&cat=1
http://www.fido.ca/portal/product/handsetdetail.jsp?id=hiptop&lang=en&cat=1

http://www.shoprogers.com/store/wireless/products/pda/treo/overview.asp?shopperI\
D=AKTCND4F8LT19JAGVB4DFW1HL80V15H6
http://www.shoprogers.com/store/wireless/products/pda/palm/overview.asp?shopperI\
D=AKTCND4F8LT19JAGVB4DFW1HL80V15H6
http://www.shoprogers.com/store/wireless/products/pda/sx56/overview.asp?shopperI\
D=AKTCND4F8LT19JAGVB4DFW1HL80V15H6

>I'm curious to know how many people might actually use a
>cell-phone version of the clear sky clocks (especially
>as cellphone companies like to charge extra for data).
>
>

Ok, there probably aren't many users of these new "converged" devices.
But they are probably the way to go since you replace 2 devices with
just 1 (especially cell and bluetooth). The good news is that they can
go everywhere on the internet so the old SkyClock would work for them.
In fact, if these devices use specific classes of IP from their provider
you can probably know from stats of your site if you get lots of traffic
from them already.

The upside is that you would just have to provide only a slightly
modified clock so that it displays well on these smaller screens. The
rest remains regular HTML (dunno if they have JavaScript built into them).

What some may find more interesting is to send SMS messages when the
clock forecasts clear sky. Same thing as the email warning but instead
of being email it would be an SMS message.

Hope this helps.

> I've talk to some friends and it looks like WAP phones essentially
died.

I'm getting the same message. Although some people replied
they had WAP phones, most had never never used the microbrowser.

WAP coverage is sufficiently restricted that it looks like it
probably wouldnt achive my objective anyway: getting astronomy
weather forecasts to people in more remote areas --- like at the
actual observing sites.


Hmm. Maybe I should get a 900 number. :}
-ad

Attilla Danko wrote:

>I'm getting the same message. Although some people replied
>they had WAP phones, most had never never used the microbrowser.
>
>
>
My phone has a microbrowser and I never enabled it past the trial. There
just wasn't enough content and it was too limited. Mind you weather
forecasts and traffic reports were about as much as I might have wanted
to use anyways.

>WAP coverage is sufficiently restricted that it looks like it
>probably wouldnt achive my objective anyway: getting astronomy
>weather forecasts to people in more remote areas --- like at the
>actual observing sites.
>
>
It's true that if the sky is really dark, your probably even too far for
analog service let alone a regular digital one (say 1x).
I can vouch from experience that coverage maps (well telus anyways
http://www.telusmobility.com/qc/coverage/pcs_home.shtml are optimistic)
and most of these areas they aren't really dark.

I guess the "preview" is small enough that new phone/PDA can use it
(I've played with one, they are so cool, but just too expensive though)

>
>Hmm. Maybe I should get a 900 number. :}
>
>
And with some automated voice software you wouldn't need staff to read
the forecast :-)

I have made (or rather updated) a page about the "astronomical weather" of
Crete, Greece:
http://home.no.net/jonbent/Sky.html

It contains my attempt at correlating weather to seeing. I have no background in
meteorology, so there are probably errors. Comments and corrections are welcome.
Jon Kristoffersen

The Clear Sky Clock website doesn't seem to be available anymore. Is
it a technical or financial problem? If it is the latter, I promise
to change my selfish, greedy ways and will pledge to contribute on a
regular basis to bring back this valuable resource. Seriously! I mean
it!

You never know what you've got 'till it's gone.....

Ed

Attilla Danko, the owner of Clear Sky Clock, posted the following on the
sci.astro.amateur newsgroup today...

[start quoted material]
The problem with the clock's website appears to be an
administration problem. I'm working on it.
I'll post when I know more.

attilla danko
danko@...
[end quoted material]

-Florian

Thanks, Florian.

--- In AstronomyWeather@yahoogroups.com, "Florian" <florian@b...>
wrote:
> Attilla Danko, the owner of Clear Sky Clock, posted the following
on the sci.astro.amateur newsgroup today...
>
> [start quoted material]
> The problem with the clock's website appears to be an
> administration problem. I'm working on it.
> I'll post when I know more.
>
> attilla danko
> danko@p...
> [end quoted material]
>
> -Florian

Sorry about the delay in responding. I was a bit busy.

The clocks are back. I've posted a bit of the story on
the news page of the clocks site:
http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/news.html

-ad

Allan and Attilla,

I'm curious if either of you have things in the works that will show
up in the CMC forecasts or the Clear Sky Clocks.  I think your work
has been a fantastic service to the astronomical community. Thank
you very much.

-- Steve Koehler

On Thu, 6 May 2004, steve_koehler wrote:

> Allan and Attilla,
>
> I'm curious if either of you have things in the works that will show
> up in the CMC forecasts or the Clear Sky Clocks.  I think your work
> has been a fantastic service to the astronomical community. Thank
> you very much.
>
> -- Steve Koehler
>

Hi Steeve,

On my side the answer is yes and no. Yes, because there will be major
changes and no because it won't be transparent on the Clear Sky Clocks.

I am going to use a brand new weather model to creates all the
astro-weather images with nearly twice the resolution. The new in house
regional model will have an horizontal resolution of 15km instead of the
actual 24km. On the vertical, the number of calculation levels will
increase from 28 to 58.
I will also use new cloud physic schemes which improves the forecast for
low clouds and convection (thunderstorms). I did many comparison and you
should see better cloud forecast this coming summer than last year. I did
also some comparaison over the prairies where the new schemes handle
better low clouds. Of course, it is not perfect and the problem we have
over Ohio with low clouds advected from the Great Lakes is not resolved
yet and the model will still over-forecast the cloud cover during the
winter under northwesterlies.
You won't see the difference on the CSC but on the maps where there will
be a lot more resolution for cloud and seeing conditions and somewhat on
the transparency forecast which is more or less filterred. Transparency
and specially the seeing code were modified to use the new information of
the 15km model. The implementation of the new astro-weather maps will take
place May 12th or May 18th... no more sure yet... still have some work to
do and we are behind schedule.

I am also planning to change the transparency forecast in adding new code
to introduce the smog but with a brand new approach. I did it last year as
a parallele run but didn't verified well. I am going to give another try
in June (when I will have more free time). I will also take this
opportunity to add another level of transparency. In the longer
term, I wish to re-write the seeing forecast.

                                     *               *
                                                         _~~~~~~~
Allan Rahill                             *     *      *(     )
                                                    ~~-(__   )
Centre meteorologique Canadien                  * (____ CMC )
Canadian Meteorological Center, Dorval, Canada     (_______)
                                                       ////
ASTRO-METEO-WEATHER                                   '''
http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/htmls/mainpage.html      '''
Attilla web page
http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk

Allan Rahill wrote:

>On Thu, 6 May 2004, steve_koehler wrote:
>
>
>
>You won't see the difference on the CSC but on the maps where there will
>be a lot more resolution for cloud and seeing conditions and somewhat on
>the transparency forecast which is more or less filterred.
>


So the CMC maps will be twice as big? Keeeeeeewwllll :-)

I guess that means that CSC will likely be more accurate.

Allan,

> On my side the answer is yes and no. Yes, because there will be major
> changes and no because it won't be transparent on the Clear Sky Clocks.

Thanks very much for the update.  I look forward to seeing the changes.
--
Steve Koehler
koehler@...

On Thu, 6 May 2004, Patrice Scattolin wrote:

> Allan Rahill wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 6 May 2004, steve_koehler wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >You won't see the difference on the CSC but on the maps where there will
> >be a lot more resolution for cloud and seeing conditions and somewhat on
> >the transparency forecast which is more or less filterred.
> >
>
>
> So the CMC maps will be twice as big? Keeeeeeewwllll :-)
>
> I guess that means that CSC will likely be more accurate.

The size of the maps will remain the same but you will see much more
details in the clouds seeing forecasts!

                                     *               *
                                                         _~~~~~~~
Allan Rahill                             *     *      *(     )
                                                    ~~-(__   )
Centre meteorologique Canadien                  * (____ CMC )
Canadian Meteorological Center, Dorval, Canada     (_______)
                                                       ////
ASTRO-METEO-WEATHER                                   '''
http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/htmls/mainpage.html      '''
Attilla web page
http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk

--- In AstronomyWeather@yahoogroups.com, "steve_koehler"
<steve_koehler@s...> wrote:
> Allan and Attilla,
>
> I'm curious if either of you have things in the works that will show
> up in the CMC forecasts or the Clear Sky Clocks.

Hi Steve,

Allan has already replied that he will soon release higher
resolution forecasts models. (Sound of hands rubbing in glee!)

Mark Casazza, tells me that he close to releaseing a new
interface for the the Clear Sky Alarm Clocks (emails
that he sends out to requesters when clocks they are
interested in change.) Mark writes that his new interface
should address a bunch of feature requests that he's gotten
in the last few months.

I've recently re-written my clock-generation infrastruct to
provide much higher reliablity. I'm also working on getting
a rundant and failover-cabable link to the net to improve
the speed at which I update the clocks. Pretty cool stuff,
if you're a software weenie like me. But there are no visible
effects that users see -- assuming I got it right.

But I'm also working on 4 new clock features, none of which are
related to Allan's new stuff or Mark's new stuff. However, I prefer
to keep people guessing until I actually release them.
Since it now looks like I'll have to rewrite, yet again,
a major chunk of code to implement them. I dont want to hazard a
guess as to  to when I'll be releasing them. But I can say they
are all features that people have been asking me for.

Basically, everyone is working at making the astronomy forecasts
even better. You just see the results in discrete steps.

Clear, and precisely forecast, skies

-ad

Hi
Over here in Europe we are very jealous of the CSC.  We have one or two
relatively poorly implemented astro forecasts of very questionable
accuracy.

Is there any chance that CSC could be implemented for UK/Europe?

Adam

--- In AstronomyWeather@yahoogroups.com, "Adam Strachan-Stephens"
<orion105@g...> wrote:
> Hi
> Over here in Europe we are very jealous of the CSC.  We have one or
two
> relatively poorly implemented astro forecasts of very questionable
> accuracy.
>
> Is there any chance that CSC could be implemented for UK/Europe?
>
> Adam

I answer this question several times a month. There is fair
interest in getting clocks for more than north america.
Unfortuneately it's quite unlikely that CMC will extend their
forecast.

The trick would be to convince UKMET (the UK equivalent of
CMC) to run the GEM 15 model and Allan's astronomy back-ends.
It would make sense for UKMET to cover europe.

That would require UKMET to spend several extra hours of
supercomputer time a day.

If you're thinking the problem could be solved by a couple of
thousand home PC running screen savers (my first question to Allan)
the answer is, sadly, that computing time isnt the main problem.

The main problem is that the GEM model requires data from 6
geosynch satellites, two low-altitude satilites and
20,000 surface observations to correctly set the boundary conditions
on all those zillions of differential equations. That data is
liscenced. Apparantly CMC pays millions of dollars every year for
that data.

So that's why a bunch of amateurs probabably wont ever run it.

But UKMET has probably already liscenced the data.

However, I dont know anyone who has pull with UKMET.

However, should UKMET, or any other country's center for weather
computation, ever choose to run the astronomy forecast models
*and give the data away for free* then I'd be very happy to
make clocks out of their data.

-ad

Attilla Danko wrote:

>But I'm also working on 4 new clock features, none of which are
>related to Allan's new stuff or Mark's new stuff. However, I prefer
>to keep people guessing until I actually release them.
>

If you implement the feature where we can interactively change the
colors of the CSC squares and thereby control the weather, extra hugs
for you at the next star party :-)