vortex95 Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 1V6 - Canon City, CO AZE - Hazelhurst, GA FMM - Fort Morgan, CO MKY - Macro Island, FL VSH - Chipley, FL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder Road Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 FMM could really be helpful on DCVZ days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isohume Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 Cool...five more sites to take with a large grain of salt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Analog96 Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 Canon City is a cool place, but I have no idea why NOAA keeps dicking around with AWOSs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isohume Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 Canon City is a cool place, but I have no idea why NOAA keeps dicking around with AWOSs. NOAA doesn't initiate AWOS sites. AWOS are normally paid for and maintained by county officials. I mean "maintained". There is no one pushing EMs to fix their sites except perhaps a private pilot or two. Therefore, AWOS sites can develop long term issues and the data becomes unreliable. Like AKQ in our CWFA, which always has T, Td, and precip issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Analog96 Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 NOAA doesn't initiate AWOS sites. AWOS are normally paid for and maintained by county officials. I mean "maintained". There is no one pushing EMs to fix their sites except perhaps a private pilot or two. Therefore, AWOS sites can develop long term issues and the data becomes unreliable. Like AKQ in our CWFA, which always has T, Td, and precip issues. And that's why they are basically useless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blizznd Posted August 5, 2012 Share Posted August 5, 2012 As a forecaster in Grand Forks ND I certainly would disagree with the useless statement, they are extremely valuable out here to fill huge gaps between NWS ASOS stations. For the state of Minnesota, the AWOS's which are owned by the state are fixed by the FAA technicians. We call the techs at FAA Farmington MN, who write up a ticket and the local FAA tech office dispatches folks to fix AWOS's. Often they can dial into the systems to fix issues. So in the majority of the cases downtime is minimal. The new North Dakota ones are maintained by All Weather Inc based in California. While I have found them slower in response time to fix issues, they do their best when they are in this part of the country. The state of North Dakota paid for most of its state AWOS's and the same for Minnesota. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blizznd Posted August 5, 2012 Share Posted August 5, 2012 I do want to say thanks Vortex95 for letting us know these new sites. I have many a contact with NWSH and there is no communication between the state level and headquarters on when these newer AWOS's start sending data through gateway. Thus without someone like you, it is quite difficult to know when new sites are sending out data. I also use IEM from my alma mater Iowa State, to help me out on new stations. I give the new stations to our ITO to get into AWIPS, as I like to look at various conditions throughout North America. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isohume Posted August 5, 2012 Share Posted August 5, 2012 As a forecaster in Grand Forks ND I certainly would disagree with the useless statement, they are extremely valuable out here to fill huge gaps between NWS ASOS stations. For the state of Minnesota, the AWOS's which are owned by the state are fixed by the FAA technicians. We call the techs at FAA Farmington MN, who write up a ticket and the local FAA tech office dispatches folks to fix AWOS's. Often they can dial into the systems to fix issues. So in the majority of the cases downtime is minimal. The new North Dakota ones are maintained by All Weather Inc based in California. While I have found them slower in response time to fix issues, they do their best when they are in this part of the country. The state of North Dakota paid for most of its state AWOS's and the same for Minnesota. Wow, I've never heard of the FAA maintaining AWOS, they don't even maintain ASOS, but it sounds like something works up in ND. I wish they did that here. Ours are owned and maintained by counties and EMs. We have two or three AWOS sites that are so notorious for displaying erroneous data that we often need to QC them out of the "populate from obs" smart tool...especially for aviation grids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blizznd Posted August 6, 2012 Share Posted August 6, 2012 Hi there isohume The FAA has a contract with the state of Minnesota to fix their state owned AWOS's. There are quite a few in the state. The AWOS's in ND that are not FAA owned were put in and paid by the state who contracted with All Weather Inc, out of Sacramento, CA, who maintains them. How it works is there is one number we call for all AWOS's in our region....that is the at the FAA Farmington ARTCC. They then take our problem and ID of the AWOS and state and then have a list of whom to contact for maintenance and open up a ticket number for us. If it is a Minnesota state owned AWOS or an FAA owned one, then they call the local FAA maintenance location (in this case Grand Forks) which handles the area where the bad AWOS is located. If it is one of the newer North Dakota ones, they call All Weather Inc. Now the company is slower to respond to issues, but I keep in contact with their techs too in California and they can remotely dial in and fix issues like the FAA techs can. Thus, the way it is set up here is that issues with AWOS's while they occur are at least looked at in a relatively fast fashion. The number of ASOS units are so spread out, we need the extra AWOS's very badly. We have 5 TAF sites, and 3 are with AWOS's....two of which dont even report present-weather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isohume Posted August 6, 2012 Share Posted August 6, 2012 Hi there isohume The FAA has a contract with the state of Minnesota to fix their state owned AWOS's. There are quite a few in the state. The AWOS's in ND that are not FAA owned were put in and paid by the state who contracted with All Weather Inc, out of Sacramento, CA, who maintains them. How it works is there is one number we call for all AWOS's in our region....that is the at the FAA Farmington ARTCC. They then take our problem and ID of the AWOS and state and then have a list of whom to contact for maintenance and open up a ticket number for us. If it is a Minnesota state owned AWOS or an FAA owned one, then they call the local FAA maintenance location (in this case Grand Forks) which handles the area where the bad AWOS is located. If it is one of the newer North Dakota ones, they call All Weather Inc. Now the company is slower to respond to issues, but I keep in contact with their techs too in California and they can remotely dial in and fix issues like the FAA techs can. Thus, the way it is set up here is that issues with AWOS's while they occur are at least looked at in a relatively fast fashion. The number of ASOS units are so spread out, we need the extra AWOS's very badly. We have 5 TAF sites, and 3 are with AWOS's....two of which dont even report present-weather. Hey cool thanks for the info! That's a pretty nice set-up. It'd be nice to get that sort of arrangement in eastern region. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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