E.BRX.IO

West-bound from Eastbourne

All good things come to an end ... in this world. Decommissioning weather station and air quality monitorDue to operator relocation this Eastbourne-based weather station and air quality monitor have had to be decommissioned and moved. As already noted on the original brxnet.org website, it's been a fun and informative

airquality

Lockdown low levels low down

Strong winds and rain have kept particulate pollution levels low over the last few weeks in Eastbourne. Everyone from NASA to Luftdaten.info to little monitoring stations like this one have been observing the lower incidence of pollution.

airquality

Very high PM2.5 as haze hoves over the horizon

Pollution levels are climbing again on Wednesday as a haze comes in. Instantaneous PM2.5 has exceeded 80μg/m³ (DAQI "very high", index 10).

airquality

Pollution goes sky-high despite lockdown

Particulate matter pollution has increased as the week has continued, despite media reports last week of the Coronavirus lockdown resulting in reduced pollution levels.

Eastbourne

Fibre To Eastbourne Premises

This week parts of Eastbourne have been inundated with Openreach vans and engineers as preparations are made to launch FTTP in the area in April.

airquality

Book review: "Clearing the air" by Tim Smedley

A great book for beginners in the topic, and for those who are keen to communicate the topic to others.

weather

Storm Ciara incoming

With clear blue skies, and a sense of calm it was hard to believe that storm Ciara would be well and truly here by Sunday morning.

PM pollution climbing

Overnight PM2.5 levels continued to climb, passing 40μg/m³ at about 2300hrs, and oscillating up to 50μg/m³ at points, with brief periods of lower pollution as clearer air from the sea eddied in to the area. The pollution source appears to be UK-based, with MetClim showing little in

weather

Off the charts

The e.brx.io weather station recorded a maximum of 1051.1hPa shortly before midnight on 19 Jan. Pressure stayed above 1050hPa until just after midday on 20 Jan. It looks like the high is beginning to pass by.

Of the charts

The new charts system involves InfluxDB and Grafana, logging data from multiple sources into one database so they can be queried together and represented on the same graph

airquality

Rebooting the HPMA115S0-XXX

The idea of a portable detector to take to different locations or when travelling seemed very useful. Personal exposure to PM is, after all, the key thing.

airquality

Fresh start for a new decade?

After a long run of fairly low levels of particulate matter pollution in Eastbourne, levels rose again as 2019 drew to a close. While on Twitter Defra was reporting low levels of PM across all regions, Eastbourne was experiencing PM2.5 peaks above 60μg/m³ (including one at midnight -

airquality

Walking in a particulate matter wonderland

Air quality levels remain good in Eastbourne as Christmas approaches. This is boring but brilliant news for local residents. According to my sensor we had a brief spike in PM2.5 at the start of December

weather

Sensor sensibility

The temperature got down to a frosty -2°C, which is quite low for Eastbourne, especially this early in December. And as the temperature dropped so the reported particulate matter levels rose. I was concerned at first that it might be a fault with the sensor, because the correlation was

airquality

Claremont Hotel fire

I have just picked up the sad news about the Claremont Hotel fire, right next to the pier on Eastbourne seafront.

Upgrading pywws on a pi

Today I am upgrading the weather station data logging computer's software. It's going sloooooowly. But once done it should allow better data analysis. Here's what's going on...

airquality

Levelling up

PM2.5 levels in Eastbourne have spiked twice today to over 50µg/m³, PM10 levels followed a similar pattern.

airquality

Raindrops keep falling on my particulate matter levels

Eastbourne has again enjoyed some nice, low particulate matter levels this week. Floating 24h average readings for PM2.5 have not risen above 8μg/m³ in the last seven days. Reasons may include: the temperature during that period only dropping briefly below 11°C, so central heating systems have not

airquality

Eastbourne expectations

Air quality in Eastbourne over the summer looks like it was generally very good, apart from the Lydd fire incident back on 24 July and the bank holiday bump on 26 August. Autumn is setting in now though.

weather

Bank holiday bump

It's been a brilliant bank holiday weather-wise with highs of 28°C and calm seas making for perfect sunbathing conditions on the beach, and thousands of people having been making the most of the opportunity. Of course, I've been interested to keep an eye on the air quality, and there

airquality

Lydd Ranges fire fallout

The cause of this evening spike in particulate matter would appear to be the fire near Lydd in Kent, 44km (27 miles) away. PM2.5 peaked at just over 240μg/m³, while PM10 peaked at just over 260μg/m³.

weather

Eastbourne in bloom and a sub-Saharan plume

On the evening of Tuesday 18 June we had a spectacular thunderstorm at the end of an unusually wet and unsettled period. The media widely reported more than 1,000 lightning strikes in the Eastbourne area.

wind power

Plotting a vertical wind turbine

Currently pondering making a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). These are the ones that look like revolving doors, or radar systems, rather than a conventional windmill (which would be described as a horizontal axis wind turbine or HAWT). Why? It is generally quite windy where we are, although gusty -

weather

Max-Q

In rocketry there is a point during the powered ascent referred to as Max-Q, the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle, it is normally the point at which the vehicle is most stressed. I don't know whether anyone has observed a correlation between human stress and atmospheric pressure,

airquality

Marvellous May

May manifests merely mild measurements of microscopic matter mist, marvellous!