The link above takes you to the Weather Underground's Radford University page that shows our weather data, updated every 5 minutes. There, you can also find the data archived in text format. 
 


Our station's data is available for download to your computer!

To monitor our station's real-time data, download and install the
Active Weather Viewer from WeatherView32.com.
Once installed launch the program, click 'edit' then 'enter/edit http server paths' and set your 'WV32 Active Viewer site' to 'http://www.radford.edu/~rusmart/wxview'. This will allow you to receive realtime weather updates from our weather station.

The image below is a live weather readout from the Texas Weather Instruments WRL-32S weather station located on the top of Curie Hall.
This image refreshes automatically every 5 minutes.
Click the image to see the dials and information at full size.


Lightning Detector legend:
"Now"=# of lightning counts in current one minute
"Last"=# of lightning counts in previous one minute
"Avg"=# of lightning counts in previous 6 minutes
Vertical lines mark each hour


Satellite Image of the Day: September 22, 2005
(click here for previous images of the day from RUSMART)

NOAA's Hydrometeorologial Prediction Center (HPC) "Daily National Forecast" image shows a daily national weather prediction

Satellites: NOAA-15 and NOAA-17, part of NOAA's 850km-high (530 mile-high) Polar Orbiting satellites

Rita, Part II: Evolution From Category 2 to Category 5 in one Day
The images below show the strikingly-quick evolution of Rita from a category 2 to a category 5 hurricane.
Hurricanes draw their remarkable power from evaporation of warm waters below them.
Using some basic physics for the heating up of water (Q=mcDT) and then its evaporation (Q=mLvaporization), one can estimate the power that has been fed into Rita during this approximate 20-hour period.   
The answer turns out to be something on the order of tens of thousands of 1-GigaWatt nuclear power stations running at their full power output!
These images show her inexorable march towards the Texas coast.

The color key for the thermal images is at the bottom of the page.

Click on the image(s) below for a higher-resolution (~100k) picture.
 

Wednesday, September 21, midday
Hurricane Storm Rita is a category 2 and growing


Rita is completely in the Gulf of Mexico, drawing more and more power from the warm waters there.
The thermal image below gives the most  distinct image of the eyewall that is characteristic of a hurricane.

Thursday, September 22, early morning
Hurricane Rita is now a category 5 monster


With such power comes the very sharp boundary at the wall of the eye. This is most strikingly seen on the higher-resolution images.

 

For perspective, note that water freezes at 00C (320F), 200C is the same as 680F, and that -400C is the same temperature as -400F.