Old Weather Forum

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On the weather page, please enter: date, locations, distances, courses, and all the weather data in the columns outlined in red in the spreadsheet.
It is not necessary to record Sea Conditions or Swells from.
However, ice mentioned in the weather grid should be transcribed using the magenta Sea columns.

On the events page please enter: ice, location information, and sailing information.
Aurorae and volcanic activity should be reported in the forum.
Other events are optional.

One person can do both weather and events (Stream 1), but the system also allows one person to do the weather page (Stream 1) and a second person to do the events page (Stream 3).
Unlike in OW3, where three transcriptions were required for each page, we are doing only one transcription per page.

Every transcriber needs to enter the date.
The date is used to organize the pages.
(If one transcriber does events and weather and they are in the same image, the date is only entered once.)

Ice hunting transcriptions were done for July and August, so only the date and the weather need to be done for those months now.
No transcriptions were done for January through June and September through December, so a full transcription is needed for those months.

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See Burton Island -- General for some general background and discussion.
See Burton Island -- Examples for a quick introduction to transcribing or a refresher.

See the Transcribing Guide to learn how to transcribe the data.
Post in Ask Questions Here or this topic if you have questions.

OW web site: Burton Island
Direct links:

• Tracker
• Spreadsheet
• File Upload
• Transcription Status

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I am claiming January 1947 as my first attempt on/at Old Weather - let's see how it goes. As a sometime cartographer and GIS user I hope my interest will be sustained in something as simple as seeing the ship's track from port to wherever they end up.

Nick (Snick)

Welcome!

Here is an example of what Michael does with our input.

You may also enjoy using and contributing to Geographical help.

As a newcomer, I have a transcription question. I am about to work on a couple of pages where the ship leaves its anchorage for a few hours and steams about on exercises such as multiple runs on a measured mile, but without specified locations or bearings, and then returns to the original anchorage; how much, if any, of the exercise should be transcribed? The fact that they have put to sea should be noted in some form.

Thanks,
Nick

How about a Transcriber Comment (no need for Type What You See in those ) to explain what happened between getting underway and mooring?

I have another question... Although this is a typed log, I am looking at a column with one digit over-typed with another and it is not obvious which is the correct entry -- how to proceed?

See page 25, Ceiling column, 0200 to 0600
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7794818

0700 is also over-typed but is clear. I see elsewhere on the forum that a tilde is one transcribing solution.

Thanks
Nick

https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 1-0025.jpg

The basic rule is make your best guess.
Asking is the discussion topic, as you are doing, is also a good method!
Finally, yes a tilde is an option.

My guess would be 16 simply because the rest of the entries are similar to the line with 16.
However, hopefully someone more knowledgeable will drop in

Weather by Symbols

Hi Nick,

I agree with Randi: 16. The first thing I noticed was that there is no difference in the cloud type, CU, or even in most of the other fields so, in this case, I would enter 16. If in doubt, a tilde would do, too. Having a few missing fields in a year's worth of data won't cause any problems, and the scientists loading the data will see those tildes and log at the logs themselves. Asking questions on the Forum is also a great strategy. You will notice that the old forum is filled with posts from people requesting help with something or other. Over the years some of the OW people have become really skilled at reading indecipherable writing, finding the names of obscure ships or locations, identifying people, etc. I was a meteorologist for 40 years, so I'm used to looking at weather data!

Thanks, both, I'll go with 16 (it's a very long time since I used a mechanical typewriter but I do remember that they were not that reliable, and there's no backspace key). I did look at the surrounding columns to maybe guide me on the best guess answer but I'm still very much a novice here, so thanks for the pointers.

On a related matter, what does the Course (PC) column record? This clearly does not relate to the course the ship may be steering because it can be recorded when at anchor. My reading of the Tracker spreadsheet is that a log page with Course recorded should have a C added to the abbreviations of content.

Thanks again,
Nick

According to item (10) here, when in port the course column is the ship's head (the direction the ship is pointing).

Unless the BY REVS or BY LOG nautical miles and tenths column is filled in, there is no need to record the course.
And if you don't record the course and distance, no need to enter C in the tracker

Sorry, folks, another question.

The science team has asked us to transcribe both Water Main Injection and Sea Temp Surf.

The input wizard, however, only appears to want sea surface temperatures. Surface temperatures are recorded for 17 and 18 January 1947 but thereafter only Sea from (in point) is the given temperature. Where both are given, there is a significant difference.

What is required at this point, please?

The table at the bottom includes a variety of information about the state of the sea. Only the first column is related to the temperature.
The other four columns describe the motion of the sea. Because that is determined by factors from earlier events elsewhere, this data is not used by the science team.


The instructions below are for a different log format, but they may still be useful if you are curious...
https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 3-0004.JPG
https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 3-0005.JPG
For more information than you really want, see Directions for keeping the ship's log & Sample log pages and Sea


P.S. Don't be sorry for asking questions! That is the way to get it right!
We are here to answer questions.

Can I claim February 1947. Or at least I will when the National Archives Catalog server is back up and running; this is unreachable every day to us in the UK in the morning but comes back online when the US gets up for breakfast.

(S)Nick

February 1947 is yours!

(Don't forget that you can pre-download 70 pages with the Bulk Download button)

Hi Randi,
Another quick question on slightly general detail this time.
7 Feb. 1947, events page (image 17), the first entry starts:

Underway enroute from ... to ...

as do most pages. The same sentence carries on with:

working southwesterly Ross Sea loose ice pack.

Given that ice and a general location are recorded, should anything of the second part be noted as an event? If so, would that be under 'Ice'?
Thanks,
Nick

The from/to isn't terribly helpful, so I would just enter "working southwesterly through Ross Sea loose pack ice" (I try to keep to the wording in the log) with a Time of 0000 to 0400 and a Type of Ice. The Subtype could be either Mixed, since there is a location mentioned, or blank, since the location is not very helpful.

Could I claim April, 1947?

Thanks,
Bryan

It's yours. Welcome on board!