What is a weather forecast? The one that we watch as a rest between news about wars, terrorist attacks and disasters.

I'll tell you. The first regular meteorological observations began in our country in Moscow, in 1650, under the father of Peter the Great, Alexei Mikhailovich. My son put meteorology on a broad state footing. Since 1722, Vice-Admiral Kruys in St. Petersburg began to make detailed records of the weather. In 1733, a weather station was opened in Kazan, and in 1734 in Yekaterinburg, Tomsk, Yeniseisk, Irkutsk, Yakutsk, and Nerchinsk.

But this is not our Cossack land. Here, without science and instruments, everyone knows everything. The first weather station in the vicinity of Meotida was opened by the grandson of the legendary Margaret Manuilovich Blazo, a scientist and public figure, Nikolai Margaritovich Sarandinaki only in 1874 in his Margaritovka on the shore of the Taganrog Bay.

I came to Margaritovka to understand myself and tell you why I am here?

This is how the station, or rather the meteorological site, looks like today.

Lost in a vast expanse where sea, sky and steppe meet. Where sunsets and sunrises in the sky.

Where people run on the chocolate sea.

Well, in fact, where was the first Don weather station to appear, no matter how here. Why do you, city dwellers living on asphalt and under air conditioners, need a weather forecast? And here, on the banks of Meotida, the forecast is a matter of life. See what the wind is doing - the top in these parts. Margaret cows have trodden a long path to the water that has gone hundreds of meters away. And what the wind does - low, it would be better not to see.

In these parts without a forecast it is impossible

And the meteorological site is located almost at the clay cliff, on the shore, open to all winds, both sea and steppe. And he seems to be listening...

In the local school museum, which is better than many of the district ones (a story about it later), there is a stand dedicated to the history of the weather station.

An honorary certificate certifies that meteorological observations really began here in 1874.

Initially, the weather station was located in the Sarandinaki mansion, which has been happily preserved to this day.

Later, this house was built, now in disrepair and abandoned.

Not so long ago, it was replaced by a standard modular unit.

Pleasant station worker Svetlana hospitably invited me inside. I got excited, now I will see how forecasts are born, and not just anywhere, but in the kingdom of the weather god, on the Meotian coast.

The workplace of the meteorologist was delightful. It turns out that he does not need now in a sheepskin coat and felt boots to make his way to the instruments brought in by snowdrifts. Information from the weather site is transmitted directly to the computer screen. But neatly lined magazine is present.

And this rotating stand, covered with neat signs! I'm sure if I understood their meaning down to the last badge, I would be able to predict the weather a hundred years ahead with incredible accuracy.

Work environment and secret symbols.

The station has its own relic - a pre-war barometer (if I'm not mistaken).

And I will definitely learn this yellowed table, the letters on which are drawn through a stencil, and I will surprise my satellites by distinguishing cumulonimbus clouds of vertical development and cirrostratus clouds of the upper tier.

The warm, neat atmosphere of the station impressed me pleasantly.

Bow to the memory of Nikolai Margaritovich

and we recall that the second weather station in our region was opened by him, in the building of the Petrovsky real school on Bolshaya Sadovaya, 12 years after Margaritovskaya, in 1886.

METEOROLOGICAL STATION - an institution that conducts regular observations of the state of the atmosphere. Observations include measurements of the values ​​of meteorological elements in a timely manner and determination of the main characteristics (beginning, end and intensity) of atmospheric phenomena. The first meteorological stations began to be created as early as the 18th century, when individual scientists or scientific societies began to conduct systematic observations of the weather. In the 19th century after the establishment of central meteorological institutes, in particular the Main Physical Observatory in St. Petersburg (1849), the weather stations received a unified leadership, as well as a common observation program.
The meteorological station includes a meteorological platform, where most of the instruments are installed (a psychrometric booth with thermometers and hygrometers, instruments for measuring wind speed and direction, a precipitation gauge, soil thermometers, etc.), an office building that houses barometers, recording parts of remote instruments, portable instruments and where observations are processed. Observations are carried out according to the standard program for a 10-minute time interval every 3 or 6 hours, and in some cases hourly. The received data is encoded and transmitted in the form of a digital summary to specified addresses (weather bureaus, aviation weather stations, etc.). Many meteorological stations, along with standard ones, conduct agrometeorological observations, determine the intensity of solar radiation (direct, diffuse, and total), the radiation balance, the amount of evaporation of soil moisture, and other meteorological stations are also installed on ships; automatic weather stations - on buoys on the high seas and in uninhabited land areas.
Observation data from weather stations are used to produce weather forecasts and warnings about adverse weather phenomena for the national economy, to study climate and its changes, as well as to directly provide service organizations with weather information.
There are portable (home) weather stations - devices that include a set of weather instruments. As a rule, this is a barometer, hygrometer and thermometer. This combination of equipment allows for a more accurate examination. environment, predict weather changes in the near future with the least error. You can find such equipment on our website and order it.

The first "code" of extreme weather events in Russia was collected back in the 16th century by decree of Ivan IV the Terrible, these data were included in the Illuminated Chronicle Code. And already in the middle of the 17th century, by decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, they began to daily observe the weather in different parts states. Volunteer observers helped to compile the first climatic features of the regions. At the beginning of the 19th century, the talented Russian scientist Adolf Kupfer set about creating a service for regular hydrometeorological observations, and in the middle of the century the Main Physical Observatory was created. From that time on, meteorological and magnetic observations began to be carried out on a regular basis, new meteorological instruments and systems for their verification began to be created.

How is the weather measured in Russia today? We have collected the most interesting data on the modern forecasting process using the capital region as an example.

reference station

Moscow receives basic data from 6 weather stations. Of these, the oldest and this moment, reference (or reference) - VVC station. The data obtained from it are official for the publication of actual weather and temperature records. It was opened on August 1, 1939 and worked until July 1940, then it was moved to a shaded place, they began to modernize .... but didn't make it. It was opened after the war, in 1949, already as an agrometeorological station. Since then, she has been working.

Outwardly, it is a platform with white (this color does not attract the sun's rays) appliances and cabinets, which at first glance seem very strange. However, any meteorological site in the world looks similar.

Main instruments of the station

A mandatory instrument of the weather station is a thermometer. There are several of them at the All-Russian Exhibition Center: some are stuck directly into the soil at different depths, others are placed above the ground in the so-called psychometric booth. One of the "booth" thermometers is constantly in distilled water, this allows you to determine the humidity of the air. By the way, a device that measures air humidity is also called a hygrometer, and it was invented by Horace Benedict de Saussure, a Swiss naturalist, while climbing Mont Blanc in the 19th century.

A mandatory device for any weather site is also a barometer. There are usually several weather vanes that measure the speed and direction of the wind, some are raised to a height of about three meters, others are located a meter from the ground.

At a height of two meters, on a special pillar, there is a precipitation gauge. This is how precipitation is measured that falls on the heads of passers-by, and not at all by the depth of puddles or the thickness of snow on the sidewalk, as some people think. The modern configuration of the device was invented by the Russian scientist V.D. Tretyakov. The device consists of a bucket and a special protective skirt resembling a half-blown chamomile. A staircase leads to them from the ground, so that it would be more convenient for the meteorologist to take measurements.

There is also an ice machine on the meteorological site, which from a distance is easy to mistake for a fragile version of the “hand-walker” sports equipment. The device heliograph, outwardly resembling a transparent globe, measures the frequency of sunshine. There are also tools for measuring the height and density of clouds. All data received from these devices is recorded in a continuous mode: thermograph, hygrograph, psychometer, barograph.

Data processing

Once every three hours, simultaneously all over the world, meteorologists get up from their chairs and go to the weather site to take data from instruments. Then, the data is processed and sent in the form of telephone messages to the head centers. In the capital of Russia, such a center is the Meteorological Bureau of Moscow and the region, where all information flows, both from weather stations and from weather posts, autonomous weather sensors and other devices. Such devices are located throughout the metropolitan area on the roofs of buildings, highways and lighting poles. Total number of these devices only in the Moscow region reaches several thousand.

The received information is processed by Met Office weather forecasters with the help of computer programs and turned into maps: prognostic maps for the day ahead, as well as surface and high-altitude ones, to calculate the coming atmospheric fronts. Further, the forecasts are sent to the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia, where they process data from all meteorological posts and stations in the country. Then, the processed information goes to colleagues from the World Meteorological Organization (it unites 185 countries), and back our specialists receive data on their measurements. In addition, data are collected from satellites, in particular, on fluctuations in the temperature of the surface layer of water in the equatorial part. Pacific Ocean El Niño, which has a noticeable effect on the climate in general.

Forecast for the layman

Digests this global information into forecasts that are generally accessible to humans, for example - “cloudy and temperatures near zero”, a meteorological supercomputer. In Russia, its latest version was delivered in 2009 at the Russian Hydrometeorological Center. This mechanism represents spacious rooms - servers. The total power of the supercomputer is now 30 teraflops (trillions of operations per second). But, as meteorologists recently admitted, these capacities are no longer enough to digest the information received.

Therefore, at the end of 2014, the Hydrometeorological Center of the Russian Federation will announce tenders for the purchase of a more powerful unit. With its installation, the quality of forecasts will certainly increase. This means that the “puzzles” that these machines put together will be more correct not only for the next day, but also for the week ahead (now the accuracy of the weekly forecast does not exceed 70 percent), and maybe for six months.

However, as the honorary president of the World Meteorological Organization Alexander Bedritsky noted, the most accurate forecast will be when each molecule is assigned its own meteorological station. Whether this will succeed in the future and whether such accuracy is necessary for a person - time will tell.

The weather station in the village of Kon-Kolodez is one of the oldest in Lipetsk region. They started to observe the weather here more than 120 years ago in an agricultural school opened by the Voronezh Zemstvo together with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Industry.

2. The weather station changed its location several times, and this house on Lenin Street has been occupied since 1957.

3. Meteorologists here monitor the state of the weather, temperature, wind direction and speed, atmospheric pressure, visibility, humidity, and precipitation. The received information is transmitted by employees 8 times a day to the interregional center of hydrometeorology of the Central Black Sea Region in Kursk.

4. According to the characteristics, the station in Kon-Kolodez belongs to the reference, that is, base stations. Observation is carried out on a small fenced area where meteorological instruments are installed.

Let's take a closer look at some of them.

5. Exhaust soil-depth thermometers - for measuring soil temperature at various depths. These are mercury thermometers placed in special tubes. They are visible in the foreground, and there are 8 of them in total. The longest thermometer measures the temperature at a depth of as much as 3.20 meters.

6. Meteorological booth designed to protect instruments from the action precipitation, wind, solar radiation.

The booth is made of wood and painted in White color so that it reflects the sun's rays as much as possible and heats up as little as possible. For ventilation, the walls of the booth are made in the form of blinds, consisting of separate slats: the air must pass without stagnation. In addition, the installation height of the booth from the ground is important - it is taken equal to 2 meters.
In such a booth, for example, a psychrometer, a hygrometer are placed - devices for measuring air humidity, as well as a thermograph - a recorder that records changes in air temperature.

7. Thermometers to measure the temperature of the soil surface, for this purpose an area without vegetation cover is used. There are several thermometers here: maximum, minimum and urgent. The maximum is mercury, where there is a capillary with a narrowing that prevents the reverse flow of mercury when the temperature drops. Thus, the highest temperature during the observation period is measured.

The minimum is alcohol, also with a special design that allows you to measure the lowest temperature for the period.
Urgent - no tricks, it shows the current temperature of the soil surface.

8. Rain gauge Tretyakov - a device for measuring the amount of precipitation. The design is a vessel that is protected from the wind by metal strips-petals. And the amount is expressed by the thickness of the layer of precipitation that has fallen into the vessel, in millimeters.

9. On high masts - instruments that monitor the wind.

10. Wild's weather vane is an indispensable attribute of any weather station.

From bottom to top here: horizontal pins oriented along the main sides of the horizon, the letter "C", respectively, points to the north; a weather vane, freely rotating under the influence of the wind, its counterweight ball shows the direction of the wind; at the top - a metal plate deviating from the vertical under the influence of the wind - the angle of deviation is used to judge the wind speed.

At present, such a device is usually used as a backup, for example, in the event of a failure of a more modern anemorumbometer.

11. Anemorumbometer is used for remote measurement of wind speed and direction. There is a wind sensor at the match, and a remote control on the meteorologist's desktop. Reliable and accurate device that works in any weather.

12. Propeller anemometer - measures the wind speed, which is determined by the number of revolutions of the turntable.

13. The most interesting device is the heliograph, for recording the intensity and duration of sunshine during the day.

14. A glass ball-lens collects the sun's rays, focuses them and directs them to a concave tape. If the sun is not covered by clouds, then as a result of the daily movement of the sun, a clear straight line is burned on the tape. When the sun is covered with clouds, the burn becomes weak or stops altogether. According to the total length of the burn on the tape, the duration of sunshine in hours per day is determined.

15. Ice machine - installation for measuring deposits of ice, frost and wet snow on wires; consists of wires stretched on poles in two mutually perpendicular directions. As soon as some deposits appear, the observer periodically measures their thickness and even weight.

16. It looks like a pyranometer to measure solar radiation.

17. Gate of the weather site.

There are analogue and digital meteorological stations.

The classic (analogue) weather station has:

• thermometer for measuring air and soil temperature
• anemorumbometer (or weather vane) for measuring wind speed and direction
• pluviograph for continuous registration of precipitation for the period of liquid precipitation
• thermograph for continuous recording of air temperature
• hygrograph for continuous recording of air humidity
• psychrometer for measuring air temperature and humidity
• ice machine for measuring ice-frost deposits
• iceoscope for determining hoarfrost and hoarfrost
• barograph to determine the barometric pressure trend

For large volumes of work, weather stations use

• evaporometer GGI-3000 for measuring the amount of evaporation from the earth's surface
• heliograph for continuous recording of sunshine

In a narrow sense, a weather station is an institution that conducts meteorological observations. Synoptic indices have been assigned to the main official weather stations of the world. In Russia, most weather stations are operated by Roshydromet. Depending on the set volume of observations, weather stations have a certain category. The data of the meteorological stations of the USSR were published in the Meteorological Monthly.

Classification of digital weather stations

Road weather stations

In addition to the sensors listed above, road meteorological stations use a surface temperature sensor and a temperature sensor at a depth of 30 cm (under the coating), as well as a controller and a GPRS module for transmitting data to information centers. To inform drivers about the weather, information boards are used, with surface and air temperature. Warnings may also appear on the scoreboard (WET ROAD, SIDE WIND, etc.)

Forest weather stations

Forest weather stations serve to prevent the possibility of forest fires. Most often, these weather stations are powered by batteries. The stations collect climate data such as tree moisture, soil moisture and temperature at various levels of forest elevation. The data is processed and a fire activity map is modeled, which makes it easier for firefighters to cope with possible ignition, or to prevent the spread of fire.

Hydrological meteorological stations

Hydrological meteorological stations conduct meteorological and hydrological observations of the weather conditions of the oceans, seas, rivers, lakes and swamps. Such meteorological stations are located on the continents, at marine floating stations, and there are also river, lake and swamp observation stations.

Domestic home weather stations

Appeared on the market relatively recently. The ancestors of domestic weather stations are ordinary barometers. The functionality of a home weather station is similar to a weather station, only much less data is processed that comes from one or more sensors installed outside the window and in other rooms. Home weather stations show indoor temperature, outdoor temperature, measure humidity, Atmosphere pressure and based on the processing of the received data by the processor, a weather forecast for the day is formed. They work both from the mains and from replaceable batteries.

Links

• Olga Timofeeva... and the weather. Russian reporter (May 2009). Archived from the original on February 24, 2012.
• Data from professional and amateur weather stations in real time [)