About DaculaWeather.com
A little about this site
The Location of Dacula Georgia
The City of Dacula is a suburb of Atlanta Georgia and is located in northeast Gwinnett County and is approximately 50 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta. The weather station is located 2.5 miles east of Hwy 316 on Harbins Road and is located in Crystal Ridge Estates Subdivision. Dacula's name comes from letters in Decatur and Atlanta, two nearby cities that were already prospering at the time of Dacula's founding. The name "Dacula" is properly pronounced da-CUE-la (duh-Q-luh). The city was once home to a train station on a CSX line through Northeast Georgia, although the station closed back in the mid 1950's. The city has experienced immense growth from a small, one light town in the early to late 80's, to now having nearly 10 public schools both from the Dacula and Mill Creek clusters of Gwinnett County Public Schools. It is also home to one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the Southeast United States, Hebron Baptist Church, which recently finished construction of a 3,850 seat auditorium. While there is the City of Dacula, Dacula is more like an area. Dacula has experienced rapid growth recently, and with the addition of commercial businesses, commerce has exploded. A 2008 demographic study completed by the developers of the Dacula Town Center, showed the population has increased greatly. According to the study, the population is now 31,466 in a 3-mile radius around Dacula. The same survey reveals that in a 5-mile radius within the 30019 zip code the population is 82,719.
Gwinnett
County is one of Atlanta's most fun filled locations. If you want sports and action, we have AAA baseball
with the Gwinnett
Braves and minor league hockey with the Gwinnett Gladiators.
There's hiking, biking and water sports at nearby Stone Mountain
Park, Ft Yargo State Park, or Lake Lanier Islands,
or visit one of the 40 parks at Gwinnett
Parks & Recreation - named the #1 Parks system in the nation, while Gwinnett
County School System was just picked (10/19/10) as the #1
urban school system in the country.
Shoppers have many choices, from the nations 25th largest mall, the Mall of Georgia - or Discover Mills, The Forum Shops, the Avenue at Webb Gin or Gwinnett Place Mall. Gwinnett's an easy drive into Atlanta and the great attractions of downtown, including the Georgia Aquarium, World of Coke, Centennial Olympic Park and Turner Field.
History of DaculaWeather.com
The DaculaWeather.com web site was created in late February of 2008 and went online around the first of March. The site went through several revisions as I learned the ropes of operating a weather site. You learn tips and tricks as you go and the site evolves as you apply the knowledge you get from other sites and site owners. The live conditions updates on this site are all dependant on an AJAX script written by Ken True at Saratogaweather.org. Without Ken, this site and many others, would not be displaying live updates. In October of 2009 the site went though it's first major revision, and was revised again in October 2010 and is what you see today. I'm in the process of slowly cleaning up the code and making sure the CSS code is compliant with the current standards. I've tested with all major current browsers and it should work correctly, however, I have not tested with Internet Explorer 6 and have no plans to make anything backward compatible with that version. Anyone using version 6 should not be... :-)
Weather Station Hardware
The first weather station was an Oregon Scientific WMR100b that was purchased in January 2008. While not considered to be the most reliable or accurate weather station, it worked well for about a year or so and was a good starter weather station. Before anyone makes a decision on a weather station purchase, please visit WXForun.net for lots of friendly advice and knowledge. Weather stations vary quite a bit and picking the right one for your budget can be a stab in the dark if you are unfamiliar with all of the issues.
| Update Interval by Sensor | |||
| Sensor | Reading | Updates | Resolution |
| Barometer | Barometric Pressure | 1 min. | .01" Hg |
| Humidity | Inside Humidity | 50 sec. | 1% |
| Outside Humidity | 50 sec. | 1% | |
| Dew Point | 10 sec. | 1° F | |
| Rain | Rainfall Amount | 20 sec. | .01" |
| Rain Storm Amount | 20 sec. | ||
| Rain Rate | 20 sec. | .01" | |
| Temperature | Inside Temperature | 1 min. | .1° |
| Outside Temperature | 10 sec. | .1° | |
| Heat Index | 10 sec. | 1° F | |
| Wind Chill | 10 sec | 1° F | |
| Wind | Wind Speed | 2.5 sec. | 1 mph |
| Wind Direction | 2.5 sec. | 22.5° | |
| Direction of Wind | 2.5 sec. | 1° | |
Over time the temperature sensor began to drift and became unreliable and I decided that an upgrade was in order. In October 2009 I purchased a Davis 6250 Vantage Vue from Ambient Weather. The Vue communicates through the Davis 6510 Serial Port Data logger to a serial port on the PC.
Vue 6250 Sensor
The Vue can communicate with and display information from other Vantage consoles, so it gives it an sensor upgrade path. By itself, you can only use the sensor suite (6357). A comparison of the accuracy and resolution of the Vue sensors compared to the other Vantage products shows the Vue sacrifices nothing to it's more expensive siblings. It appears from the specifications that the actual sensors are from the Vantage Pro. I will report on how things go as time goes on.
The table to the left shows how frequently the sensors update and their measurement resolution. The Virtual Weather software updates the conditions every 4 seconds while the AJAX script checks for updates sent to the web site every 4 seconds. It's as close to real time as you can get.
The sensors are installed at 1040 feet above sea-level at the following coordinates:
Latitude: 33° 57' 12" N (deg min sec), 33.95335° (decimal), 3357.20N (LORAN)
Longitude: 83° 51' 26" W (deg min sec), -83.85710° (decimal), 08351.43W (LORAN)
The sensor suite is located approximately 60 feet from the base station and is mounted 9.0 feet high on a galvanized steel pole. The pole is filled with concrete so it cannot flex in the wind and has three guide wires to help keep things steady. It sits at the edge of the yard above grass and is at least 20 feet away from any vegetation of equal height. As in most personal weather stations, sensor location is always a compromise. CWOP Weather Station Siting, Performance, and Data Quality Guide gives this site a score of 18 out of 30. The chart below shows the ideal locations compared to the actual sensor location:
| CWOP Location Comparison | |||
| Sensor | Optimal location | This Site | Score |
| Wind Speed and Direction | 32' above ground. No obstructions | In open 9' above the ground | 4 |
| Temperature and Humidity | In open, 5 feet above grass w/fan aspirated temp sensor | Non-fan aspirated shielded temp sensor, In open 9' above the ground | 7 |
| Rainfall | In open, 2 feet above grass. | In open, 9' above the ground | 8 |
The weather computer is a Dell Dimension E510 with 1GB of ram and a 320GB SATA drive running Windows Media Center XP SP3. It was originally setup as a music server but now functions as a weather server. I added a StarTech 2 port PCI serial card for communications to the Davis serial data logger. The computer uses a wireless connection from a Linksys USB wireless network adapter to a Netgear wireless router connected to a Comcast cable modem. Basically, everything is wireless from the sensors to the router. I have plans on building a mini-itx low-power computer to replace the current desktop and will allow for extended run-time on an APC UPS.
Weather Station Software
I currently use Virtual Weather Station (VWS) version 14.01 p43 from Ambient Weather for all of the live web site updates.The site uses a combination of 8 second data uploads that are read by an AJAX javascript that runs on the opening web page and updates the "Current Conditions". There are automated scripts that run to display advisories, watches and warnings, and those will be displayed below the menu at the top of most of the main pages. VWS also sends my weather data to Wunderground.com, Hamweather.com, and CWOP (Citizen Weather Observation Program). Weather Link is the Davis software that was used in the setup of the console. I have installed VirtualVP software that allows multiple weather station software packages to communicate simultaneously with the Vue. StartWatch manages the loading and monitoring of all my weather applications for problems and freezes. More than a year ago I installed Weather Display to add additional functionality to the web site. We went live on August 1st 2010 with software from WXMesg.com called Weather Message and it allows us to receive and re-transmit weather watches, warnings, advisories and other weather related messages directly from the EMWIN (Emergency Management Weather Information Network) from the National Weather Service. We then re-transmit these alerts directly to your inbox, Twitter, and to Facebook, instantly as soon as the messages are issued.
Other Sites Using DaculaWeather Data
My weather information is quality checked by comparing my data with other reference stations in the region. I am notified should my information drift outside certain parameters so that I can take corrective actions. It also helps to validate my sensor calibrations to insure my information is as accurate as possible. My current quality status can be viewed here Two thumbs up for data quality is the best you can get.
All of our weather data and observations from DaculaWeather.com are also transmitted and shared with these weather agencies and weather information services around the country:
NWS SKYWARN® Spotter - Spotter Network 7899
Weather Underground (Station KGADACUL3) - Featured site for Dacula - with "Rapid Fire"
Weather
Underground -
DaculaWeather Web cam Page
Southeastern Weather Network - Member
North American Weather Network - Member
AWEKAS - Automatic Weather Map System Member
Citizen
Weather Observer Program (CWOP) (DW3642)
NOAA MESONET (DW3642)
NOAA MADIS (D3642)
National Weather Service Atlanta - Listed on the NWS Atlanta site (D3642)
Centerville Elementary School - Using weather stickers from this site.
Dacula Elementary School - Using weather stickers from this site.
You can also follow us and the weather on:
http://www.twitter.com/daculaweather
Lilburn-Mountain Park Patch.com Blog
Loganville-Grayson Patch.com Blog
PeachtreeCorners-Berkley Lake Patch.com Blog
Credits and Special Thanks
We're proud and appreciative that the members of WXForum.net selected DaculaWeather.com as the Spring 2011 Featured Weather Web site! 
Thank you to all of the WXforum members that voted for my site!
There are many people to thank for their help and assistance in the creation of this web site and I would like to acknowledge a few of those here:
- Meteorologist Allan Hoffman at RaleighWX - Thanks to Allan for so graciously allowing me to use his forecast model maps and graphs on my site. You can also read Allan's weather column on the Raleigh Daily Examiner.
- Danny Crum at Eldoradocountyweather.com - Many, many thanks for his scripts and his assistance and patience with me in setting up the radar and Flash loops. He's a great programmer and a great person and I can't say thank you enough.
- Ken True at Saratoga-Weather.org - Many, many thanks to Ken for his AJAX/PHP scripts and all of his helpful programming tips, tricks and coding troubleshooting. I couldn't do any of this without Ken's help and expertise. Plus Ken's WXForum is the best on the internet for those wanting to put a personal weather station on the web.
- Larry at Anole Computer/St. James City Weather - Weather graphic PHP script that I use for my weather stickers.
- Bashewa Weather - For the cloud conditions script that's used on the opening page.
- Michiana Weather - Thanks to Curly for his great Atom Alerts script for weather warnings.
- Relay Weather - Thanks to Michael for his Air Quality script and help with a mobile version of the Atom Alert.
- Southern Maryland Weather - Thanks to Jim for his Upper Air Soundings script as well as his VWS Yearly Summary Scripts, very slick stuff.
- Weather Underground - Thank you for the generous use of your maps. I hope everyone will take the time to go to the Weather Underground web site and explore all of information that's available.
- Hamweather.com - Once again for their generous use of their videos and images. For those of you that wish to add more presence to you web site, visit Hamweather to get more information.
- WXForum.net - Thank you to all it's members for answering questions and offering helpful suggestions every step of the way.
- Weather-Watch.com - Another very useful forum, especially for users of Weather-Display software.
There are some companies that I would not recommend to anyone. One in particular that I had a run in with is Meteorlogica based out of the UK. They been downright rude to deal with and not recommended at all.
DaculaWeather.com is privately owned and operated and is not affiliated with the City of Dacula or with any official government
agency. The use of this site is provided as a public service for Dacula and the Gwinnett County area residents
and should never be used to make any important weather related decisions.
Weather Data Use Disclaimer
The user assumes the entire risk related to the use of this data. DaculaWeather.com is providing this data "as is", and DaculaWeather.com disclaims any and all warranties, whether express or implied, including (without limitation) any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
In no event will DaculaWeather.com be liable to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special or exemplary damages or lost profit resulting from any use or misuse of this data.
