About This Station
The station is powered by a La Crosse WS3600 weather station. The data is collected every 60 seconds and the site is updated every 5. This site and its data is collected using Weather Display Software. The station comprises of an anemometer, rain gauge and a thermo-hydro sensor situated in optimal positions for highest accuracy possible. To increase reliability, the base and external unit are connected via cable rather than a radio link.
The computer sending data to the website is a Intel Quad Core Q6600, with an uptime of 0 Days 0 Hours 55 Minutes 9 Seconds, and with -2072.640 MB of free memory. Weather Display version 10.37k was last restarted at 8:03:29 PM 16/07/2009 and has received 2 packets of data since that time.
About Lithgow
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.
About This Website
This site was redesigned in May 2009 to fit in with a new-look Lithgow Lights site. The data the weather pages contain is loosly based on the layout designed by CarterLake.org. Special thanks go to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather.
