LithgowWeather - About the station

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The station is powered by an Oregon Scientific WMR100 weather station, which replaced an old La Crosse WS3600 weather station which failed mid 2010. The data is collected every 5 seconds and the webpages are updated every 10 minutes, while some graphics are updated hourly. This site and its data is collected using Weather Display Software, and the station comprises of an anemometer, rain gauge and a thermo-hydro sensor situated in optimal positions for highest accuracy possible, and away from temperature and wind influences caused by houses and other structures. The addition of a UV meter in the coming weeks will also add valuable information. Because this weather station is wireless only, there maybe times when data is unavailable, due to severe weather or electrical storm activity.

The computer used to record and send data to the website was upgraded in September 2010 from an Intel Quad Core Q6600 to an Intel I7 930 with 12GB RAM and a dedicated HDD for the weather station software. It has an uptime of 2 Days 1 Hours 27 Minutes 11 Seconds. Weather Display version 10.37R was last restarted at 7:46 pm 03/02/12 and has received 58887 packets of data since that time.

Lithgow was named after Governor Brisbane's private secretary, William Lithgow, in 1827 by Hamilton Hume. Settlers arrived in 1824, but because of the harsh mountains and valleys surrounding the area, only four more settlers arrived in the next 15 years. The opening of the western railway in 1869 caused the town to rapidly grow.

Much of the Lithgow and surrounding areas contains large deposits of black coal. In 1875 Australia's first blast furnace was built, manufacturing large quantities of pig iron which was transported on the rail line to Sydney. Brickworks, pottery manufacturing and even breweries soon followed.

The opening of the Small Arms Factory in 1912 brought a large influx of people into the town, and production was rapidly increased during World War I. The factory begun making more common items from projectors, sewing machines, and thousands of other parts, both small and large, between the wars. The workforce increased to an astounding 6,000 people during the Second World War, with another 6,000 people employed in smaller factories helping provide parts to be assembled in the main factory. Economic cutbacks since the war has seen the factory scale down its Lithgow operations.

The decline of Lithgow's industrial heyday made way for light industry after World War II. In the late 1950s, a power generating plant was built at Wallerawang paving the way for Lithgow’s role in the clean and efficient production of energy. This was further expanded over time to what is now two 500MW units at Wallerawang, and two 660MW units at Mt Piper, just a few km away. It is at this second power station that the website owner is employed, and suprisingly, he also lives directly behind the Small Arms Factory in Lithgow, the employer of his grandfather for most of his adult working life.