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About This Station
About LakevilleWeather.com
Lakevilleweather.com is a private weather station and
website serving the city of Lakeville, MN, Dakota County, and the world
with real-time, accurate, and localized weather reporting. Our weather
station is located in Lakeville, MN, a southern suburb of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St.
Paul). Our station went live in April of 2006, and each year we grow in both services provided, as well as internet traffic.
Above is a view of the station from the Northeast Elevation. It is mounted on a standard 4.5 foot aerial mast. The station anemometer is on the very top of the mast, and includes a directional vane and wind cups. About 1.5 feet below is the ISS (Integrated Sensor Suite). The ISS contains a self-tipping rain gauge bucket that measures in 0.01" increments. Here is a closeup of the self-tipping device:
The rain collects in and funnels through the bucket, and drips into the
silver cups you see in the picture above. Once the weight of the water
tips the drip cup over, a magnet passes over a reed switch and sends a
signal to the station. The water then drains out from the ISS. All weather observation data is monitored and recorded via WeatherDisplay software. Data files compliled by WeatherDisplay are parsed, formated, and published to the internet via dynamic HTML, pHp, ajax, Flash, and other website publication and coding technologies. The data also is transmitted to several different weather networks, including Weather Underground (Station KMNLAKEV2), and the Citizen Weather Observer Program (Station CW5773). Our data is oftentimes obtained by other websites, media, and users via the Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS). Our staion code in MADIS is MC5773.
Quality Assurance data is provided by the CWOP program to lakevilleweather.com. Check our our accuracy here. |
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About This City
Lakeville is located in the southeast corner of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, within Dakota County. Rich in historical lore, today's Lakeville had its origins back in 1853. That's when Captain William B. Dodd, who came from the east to serve the military forts in the Minnesota Territory, designed and directed the construction of a road that would serve as a practical land route connecting the military forts in St. Paul to the southern forts. The road, which was named for Captain Dodd after he was killed in the Sioux uprising in 1862, bisects present-day Lakeville.
J.J. Brackett, who owned a St. Paul lumber mill and transported mail, supplies and travelers along this route, soon chose Lakeville as an ideal site for a town because it was roughly halfway between St. Paul and St. Peter. In 1855 he platted 250 acres and named it Lakeville because it bordered the nearby Prairie Lake. By 1858 Lakeville contained a general store, two hotels, a boarding house, a blacksmith shop, a saloon and a shoemaker shop.
Griffin Phelps is believed to have been Lakeville's first real settler. He came to Minnesota in 1853 and went to work for J. J. Brackett. Mr. Phelps is believed to have "squatted" on land along Lake Marion before settlement was actually even legal. He is known to have sowed the first rye in the area in 1853, and was appointed postmaster in 1854 by President Pierce. The post office was the first in this part of the county, so people from Rosemount, Empire, Eureka and Poplar Grove came for their mail. Phelps served in the Civil War in Co. F, Hatch Battalion, Minnesota Cavalry, from 1864 to 1866, when he returned to Lakeville.
Lakeville Township, which encompassed the rural area around the tiny town of Lakeville, was officially formed as a governing unit in 1858. A variety of ethnic groups settled in the Lakeville area in the early years, including immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, England and the Scandinavian countries.
When the Hastings and Dakota Railroad was built near the tiny village of Lakeville in 1869, railroad officials tried to buy land for a depot from a Scotsman who refused to sell. The railroad then bought 20 acres a half mile east, put up a platform and named this area Fairfield. It wasn't long before existing businesses moved from the original town site to Fairfield, and new businesses were established at the new town site. For nine years, business owners and residents tried to get Fairfield's name changed to Lakeville. In 1878, they decided they wanted a government separate from the township and sought incorporation as the Village of Lakeville. The short-lived name of Fairfield is carried on in the city's Fairfield Business Campus and the Fairfield Apartments that provide housing for senior citizens.
In 1910, Colonel Marion Savage and several partners had a dream that resulted in building an amusement park, along with a railroad line that connected the park with the Twin Cities. They located their park on the east shore of the then-Prairie Lake, renaming it Lake Marion after Colonel Savage. Antlers Amusement Park became one of the most famous amusement parks in the upper Midwest. It contained a lavish dance pavilion with a gleaming oak dance floor; a large bathing beach that featured a dock, diving tower and high sliding chute; a boat dock that offered sailboats, rowboats and canoes; a children's playground with a miniature operating train for children; tennis courts, an athletic field and baseball diamond with a grandstand for spectators; and an aerial swing. A nine-hole golf course was located nearby. The rail line was named the Dan Patch Railroad Line after the famous racehorse owned by Colonel Savage. Luxury excursion cars with real leather seats, stained glass upper windows and richly carved and inlaid wood brought thousands of visitors to the park each summer. On weekends in the summer of 1912, these trains reportedly made 19 scheduled runs each day. The area was already popular with wealthy families from southern states who came to escape summer heat and humidity. These families and other visitors stayed in cabins located around the lake or at Weichselbaum's Resort, which was famous for its fried chicken, apple pie and homemade ice cream. The amusement park declined in popularity in the 1920s and 1930s due to a combination of factors - the advent of the automobile, the Great Depression and several dry years that saw Lake Marion drop to its lowest level ever.
The original village and fire hall, built in 1910, still stands downtown. Now home to small businesses and apartments, the building features a tower that once held a bell that summoned townspeople to fight fires. The original bell now hangs in a new tower on the Fire Department headquarters building. Agriculture was the major industry in Lakeville for many years, with several grain mills that handled crops grown by area farmers, and a creamery that processed milk into diary products.
Airlake Industrial Park, which is now home to more than 100 businesses and employs 4,000 people, opened in 1967. At the same time, most of Lakeville Township merged with the Village of Lakeville to become the 38-square-mile City of Lakeville. Just prior to the merger, Lakeville Township included 2,100 residents, while the village was home to just under 1,000. By 1970, Lakeville's population had grown to 7,557. The population doubled from 1970 to 1980, and doubled again from 1980 to 1992. The current population is more than 43,000. Lakeville is expected to become the largest city in Dakota County by the year 2020.
- From the Lakeville Historical Society
About The Station Techie Stuff (Equipment, Software, Website)
Equipment and Software
Equipment:
Davis Instruments Vantage Pro 2 Wireless Weather Station and Integrated Sensor Suite
- Weather Station Console (receives data from sensors, processes, and displays data. Also contains barometer.)
- Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS):
- Includes rain collector/self-tipping rain bucket, temperature and humidity sensors, anemometer, and solar panel (the suite is solar-powered with a battery backup). Electronic components are housed in a weather-resistant shelter. Temp and humidity sensors are housed in a radiation shield to deflect effects of direct sunshine and reflected radiant heat from land surfaces. Data is transmitted wirelessly from the ISS to the station console in 1-3 second intervals. Wireless range is up to 1000' (300 m) outdoors, line of sight.
- NIST Certification Standards for Sensor
Equipment:
- Anemometer - ± 5% at 6, 12, 25, 40, and 75 mph; Additional Wind Speed Points ± 5%
- Barometer - ± 0.05" Hg (± 1.3 mm Hg, 1.7 mb, or 1.7 hPa)
- Outside Humidity: ± 3%
- Outside Temperature: ±1°F at 0, 40, and 80°F (±0.5°C at -18, 4, and 27° C); ±2° F at -40, -15, and 140°F (±1.0°C at -40, -26, and 60° C)
- Rain Collector/Self-tipping Bucket: ± 4% plus one tip (0.01")
USB Data Logger for Davis VP Stations
- Logs and transmitts data between Weather Station Console and PC
- USB Port Accessibility
Dell Dimension 4700 Desktop
- Data collection, processing, and publication server.
- Specifications:
- Pentium IV Processor, 2.8 GHz
- 504 MB Usable RAM
- Windows XP Pro 2002, Service Pack 2
- 320 GB Hard Disk Storage
- Secured LAN connection - High Speed Ethernet Connection to LAN and Broadband Internet
Software:
Weather Display, by Brian Hamilton
This program is the heart-and-soul of lakevilleweather.com. Program downloads, logs, and displays weather data in virtually any format possible through user specification. Through custom data tagging, web content and display pages are produced by Weather Display, and then uploaded to the internet. Other features include real time, auto scale, and historical graphing, FTP of the weather data to remote servers, pager and email notifications of extreme conditions, web download, Metar/ Synop emails, averages/extreme/climate/NOAA reports, web cam upload, grouped file uploads, FTP downloads, decoded metar downlaod's, APRS output (internet and direct com port as well) ,WAP, direct web cam capture, animated web cam images, weatherdials, weather voice, weather answer phone, and direct interface with several weather publication services like Weather Underground, Weather for You, CWOP, NOAA, Ham Weather, etc.
Flash FXP, by iniCom Networks, Inc.
Versitile FTP software, well vetted for performance, connectivity, and a user-friendly interface.
OddcastV3, from Oddsock.org
Freeware audio encoding and streaming utility.
Soundmanager2, by Scott Schiller
Freeware AJAX script used to load and manage audio effects on websites. We use it to play the NOAA Weather Radio stream.
General PHP, AJAX and JavaScript Coding
Several people are in need of credit for their contributions to the development of weather website technology. You will see their names repeated on several sites, forums, and resources for weather website developers. As mentioned above, Brian Hamilton's Weather Display software truly is at the heart of our site. The program pumps out a raw-data file every three seconds and uploads it to our webserver. From there, Kevin Reed at TNET Services developed PHP code that parsed the data from Weather Display. Tom Chapin of CarterLake.org and "Pinto", a weather-watch member from Belgium, collaborated to develop AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) scripts that kept the data "live" by refreshing dynamic elements like temp, wind, humidity, etc. Ken True at Saratoga Weather polished up, simplified, and enhanced the scripts and we use Ken's scripting here with some minor tweaks for lakevilleweather.com customization.
This site is a template design by CarterLake.org with PHP conversion by Saratoga-Weather.org.
Special thanks go to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather for his work on the original Carterlake templates, and his design for the common website PHP management.
Special thanks to Mike Challis of Long Beach WA for his wind-rose generator, Theme Switcher and CSS styling help with these templates.
Special thanks go to Ken True of Saratoga-Weather.org for the AJAX conditions display, dashboard and integration of the TNET Weather common PHP site design for this site.
Template is originally based on Designs by Haran.
This template is XHTML 1.0 compliant. Validate the XHTML and CSS of this page.