The turbine is located on the river Esk near Whitby and depends on rainfall falling on the catchment.
The Esk rises in Westerdale, passes through Castleton, Lealholm, Briggswath to Whitby. The Environment Agency has monitoring stations at these locations.
The Environment Agency have opened up their data so we now record river levels along the river and the rain falling in Westerdale
This graphic should be helpful to see if the turbine will start up soon (if not running!)
Slide the green slider button to change the view time
The percentages are the probability of the indicated rainfall, so is 20% of heavy rain better than 90% of light rain?
The river level and rainfall monitoring stations are shown on the map above and you can interact with the data by clicking the green arrows. This data is shown here.
The river levels have an arbitrary datum level (probably the river bed at the location).
The “Upper River Level” is the turbine’s upper river level (maOD) less 3m to make it fit with the other levels.
When the peaks occur and how high they are will show how general the rain is falling and when to expect it to arrive at the turbine.
Notes on Rainfall:
The rainfall rate at Westerdale uses the right axis.
It is a tipping bucket which tips at 0.2mm and recorded by the EA every 15 minutes.
The source data values (in mm) are the number of tips per quarter hour * 0.2
They are shown here by multiplying by 4 (60 minutes/15 minutes) and therefore represent mm/h for each 15 minute interval.
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