Ice in the Mountains but Rain in the Valley
So, it’s winter, and you’re sitting in a restaurant in Jasper or Ellijay Georgia and you wonder if you should drive home. The night is cold and it rained in the Lowlands an hour ago. You wonder, has it rained in the mountains and is the temperature cold enough that the roads may be iced over? Or, perhaps you’re cozy at your home in Canton, Georgia and wonder if the water pipes at your mountain cabin may be freezing up.
The weather system on Burnt Mountain, Sassafras Mountain, Oglethorpe Mountain and other high points around Jasper and Ellijay Georgia is a micro-weather system due to the 2000-foot elevation difference between the lowland towns and the mountain tops. Weather on the television reflects 1000-foot temperatures, not 3000-foot ones. Winds can be howling at fifty miles per hour up here, and be “umbrella calm” in the Lowlands. How can you get that local mountain weather update?
The “Foggy Top Lodge” Weather Station at the top of Sassafras Mountain in Jasper, Georgia is public and accessible anywhere you have internet. It is at 3225 feet elevation and in a clearing a distance from houses, garages, or hot rooftops. From your phone or computer, you can get temperatures; wind speed, gust speed, direction and averages; precipitation rate and accumulation: and lightning strikes among other information. Updates occur every few seconds. It’s true that several of us Mountaineers have built on spectacular cliffs where it’s hard to hold your hat on a windy day. Those wind speeds are likely 10 or so miles per hour above this station’s wind readings.
Two apps can be used to access the weather data. In AmbientWeather.net sign up and search for the “Foggy Top Lodge” personal weather station. Or, if you prefer use WeatherUnderground.com and search for location KGAJASPE202. (Notice there is no R in “KGAJASPE202”).
For the nerds out there, the station is the “Ambient Weather WS-5000 Ultrasonic Professional Smart Weather Station & Thermo Hygrometer”. A great feature of this system is that there is no spinning wind thingy (an anemometer) that tells you wind speed on clear cold days but easily freezes up when the snow and ice blows. Instead, the wind speed on this system is determined ultrasonically and a teeny-weeny heater keeps it un-iced and comfy in the coldest of days.
And for you ultra-nerds, the darned thing detected the change in atmospheric pressure at “Foggy Top Lodge” from the January 16th 2022 1am underwater volcano eruption near Tonga in the South Pacific – 18000 miles away!
Let me know if you want to know more about it.
Keep warm my friends…
Charles Caldwell
[email protected] or on Facebook
