Ticker for July 28, 2004

                
MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
July 28, 2004      July 28, 2004      July 28, 2004      July 28, 2004



Mesonet QA: Elementary, My Dear

Well, July 2004 is on track to be our coolest since 1989, and it
may even sneak into history even cooler than that.  Today's gloomy
skies, rain and wet streets seem more like London than Oklahoma.
And the foggy streets of London provide the perfect backdrop for
today's Ticker - a mystery thriller!

So, close your eyes, think of Big Ben and cobblestones, then read
on ... after opening your eyes, of course.

This morning, Mesonet operator Cindy Morgan noticed a peculiarity
with the Ardmore meteogram (yes, the same Cindy Morgan that noticed
last week's bats):



The temperature and dew point traces did strange things around
seven o'clock last night.  Cindy notified Mesonet Quality Assurance
Manager Janet Martinez about the quirky data.

Now, being the Mesonet QA Manager is a unique challenge. She must
at once be a skilled meteorologist, a traffic cop for information,
a voracious consumer of data, and willing to work three or four
hundred hours per week.  But most of all, she must be a top-notch
and relentless detective.  Janet may not wear a deerstalker hat,
but she is the Sherlock Holmes of Norman.

Mesonet data is innocent until proven guilty, but nobody builds a
case like Janet.  She'd seen this before:

* The hour-long dip of the temperature variables was not
corroborated by behavior of the other variables.  From this
information, and some damning evidence from Ardmore's neighbors,
Janet deduced that the anomaly was probably not due to weather.
In fact, the anomaly was local to the temperature and humidity
sensor.

* Janet noticed that the temperature (and dew point) profile was
much smoother after the event than before (this is quite evident
in the meteogram). Something was damping the signal, making it
slower to respond to the environment.

With a hearty "Aha!", Janet leapt to her conclusion: "The dip in the
temperature occurred when someone or something smeared mud on the
sensor.  The mud dried by evaporation - a cooling process - which
depressed the temperature.  The drying process had help ... it was
fanned by a pair of tiny, beating wings. The damped response to the
environment is a tell-tale indicator of a sensor encased in dried mud."



With that, she produced an image documenting the sinister work of
a mud dauber, from a case she solved last month:



The mystery was solved. Janet issued a trouble ticket, and the sensor
will be attended to very soon. And, as she signed the trouble ticket,
for just a fleeting moment in time, you could smell the faintest
whiff of pipe tobacco in the air. "It was elementary," Janet smiled,
as she donned her topcoat and disappeared into the fog.