End of an era in Penzance

[Graham Easterling]

I started recording the weather in Penzance on 1st January, after previously done a few years in Wootton Bassett.

In 1992 I stored the data in a DbaseIV datanase, uprogrammed using it's 4GL language, later transferred to Lotus (later IBM) Aprroach which used the same file structure, and was still a true relational database. 

Anyway, my aim was always to achieve 30 years, so as to reach the standard period for climatic norms, which I've now surpassed. I've stuck with a standard rain gauge & sheathed thermometers throughout. I don't believe you can change the type of equipment, even change from a wooden to a plastic screen, without having some impact on the recordings. 

For anybody who's interested I can supply, as a dbf file or a delimitted txt file for the following daily data

,  n supply

Readings taken 09:00 each day

Pressure, Wind Direction, fog and snow cover refer to 09:00 

Thunder, Gale, Fog and snow fields set to Y if true.

Hail set to S(mall) or L(arge) if true

Sheathed thermometers in a standard Stevenson screen.

Monthly, and annual data is largely calculated on the fly by the reporting programs, to ensure consistency of data. I have knocked up a program to run through the main database, and copy calculated monthly data for each month into individual records in a monthly database. That will mean anybody interested can have monthly data without having to do any work!

A few means / extremes over various periods here. https://penzanceweather.free.nf/wpage2.html?i=1

Graham

Penzance, it's stopped raining!