About This Station
| ThorntonWeather.com went online in October 2006. The station is powered by a Davis Instruments Vantage Pro2 Plus weather station. The station comprises an array of sensors including an anemometer (wind), rain gauge, a thermo-hygro sensor, and a UV sensor and solar radiation sensor. The temperature and humidity sensors are housed in a radiation shield to protect against solar radiation and other sources of radiated and reflected heat. This shield also is aspirated by a 24 hour fan to ensure accurate readings. The data is collected from the sensors every 2 seconds and the website is updated from every 10 seconds to every 10 minutes depending on the data and the page. |
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For our lightning detection system, we utilize a Boltek StormTracker coupled with specialized software (Nexstorm) to track and range lightning targets. For more information, please click here to view the page about our lightning system.
In the News: ThorntonWeather.com has been in area newspapers multiple times. We routinely post weather related articles to YourHub which are often times then published in the print edition. Two articles in particular provide some good background about us:
- Northglenn-Thornton Sentinel Article (PDF of print article)
- YourHub Article (PDF of print article)
ThorntonWeather.com Station Photos |
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The complete Davis VP2 weather station system. |
The sensor suite monitoring an approaching storm. |
A closeup of the sensor suite. |
ThorntonWeather.com's anemometer (wind sensor). |
The owner & operator of ThorntonWeather.com. |
About This Website
This website is owned and maintained by a Thornton resident as a hobby and as a service to area citizens (we are not endorsed by or an official website of the city of Thornton). The Davis Instruments weather station console receives data from the various sensors. This console is then connected to a Dell PowerEdge 2500 server with dual Xeon processors and 2GB of RAM running Windows 2000 Server. A software program called Weather Display captures all the data and then in turn uploads the information to the web server (hosted by Denver Web Host). The computer, while very powerful, is overkill for this application - much less powerful hardware can run the software that runs ThorntonWeather.com.
Our website is constantly changing as we add new features and enhance existing ones. We keep a log of these changes in our blog here. Click here to view our website change log. This site is based on a template design by CarterLake.org. Special thanks go to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather and Ken True at Saratoga Weather for sharing their knowledge of PHP, AJAX and various other features that this site uses. Significant knowledge and troubleshooting help has also been gained from the awesome users on the Weather Watch forums. |
 Dell PowerEdge 2500 Server. |
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 A screenshot of the Weather Display software. Click to see a larger image of its current display. |
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About Thornton
Modern day Thornton was comprised solely of farmland until 1953, when Sam Hoffman purchased a lot off Washington Street about seven miles north of Denver. The town he laid out was the first fully planned community in Adams County and the first to offer full municipal services from a single tax levy, including recreation services and free trash pickup. It was announced in a Denver Post article on Feb. 19, 1953, that Mr. Hoffman had decided that the new community was to be called Thornton in honor of then current governor Dan Thornton.
On September 21, 1953 work on the first 30 homes began and then On January 31, 1954, the first 40 families moved into brand new, one-story brick houses. The Thornton Community Association (TCA) was formed in 1954 to help guide the new community's development. By the end of 1955, Thornton had 5,500 residents in over 1,200 homes. On May 26, 1956, Thornton was incorporated as a Colorado city and had a population of 8,640 and was one square mile in size.
From a town in the middle of nowhere, Thornton grew - and continues to grow - rapidly. That single housing development from 1953 has now grown into a city with an estimated population of 120,000 (2007) and now encompasses over 27 square miles. Thornton is the sixth most populous city in the State of Colorado and the 225th most populous city in the United States. To learn more about Thornton, please visit their web site at: http://www.cityofthornton.net.
For more information on Thornton / Denver and Colorado climate, please see our Climatology pages.
* ThorntonWeather.com is not endorsed by or an official website of the city of Thornton.