Home Weather Stations

[lonewolf]

Wolf blood.

well I am LoneWolf, or did you mean something else?

 

[Cabin Fever]

I didn't read through all of the recommendations, so someone may have already mentioned this. Make sure you get a weather station that has the ability to read real cold temperatures. I had one that quit send me temps once they dropped below -10ºF. Small batteries don't work so well at real cold temps.

 

[Mountain trapper]

I get the weather on my phone too, when i get a signal, but it's from town that's 20 miles away and 2,000 feet lower in elevation. That's not very accurate where we live and why I bought a decent home weather station. In the mountains even a few feet can make a difference in the weather. For example, here at the house we have a few inches of snow, and down at the bottom of our driveway there isn't any snow. My weather station is 300' from the house and in just that short distance it's usually a degree or two warmer that at the house.

 

[Pearl]

I get the weather on my phone too, when i get a signal, but it's from town that's 20 miles away and 2,000 feet lower in elevation. That's not very accurate where we live and why I bought a decent home weather station. In the mountains even a few feet can make a difference in the weather. For example, here at the house we have a few inches of snow, and down at the bottom of our driveway there isn't any snow. My weather station is 300' from the house and in just that short distance it's usually a degree or two warmer that at the house.

Microclimates! I have NINE thermometers around our place. Four rain guages. It always amazes the differences!

 

[Haertig]

I found a unique use for one of the outdoor thermometers we had and weren't using. A few years back we had a problem where the breaker to the hot tub was constantly tripping (the fault was eventually found to be in the breaker, not the tub). But it was doing this during the worst time - when it was -20 outside. We didn't want the tub to freeze (that takes weeks even in the frigid cold, due to large thermal mass and great insulation).

So I opened up the service panel to the tub and attached the outside temperature sensor unit to a big 'ol fat pipe coming out of one of the pumps. I just used long twist ties to hold it in place (those long ties came off of heads of lettuce leafs I bought in the grocery!) Normal hot tub temp is like 105 degrees, and my jury rigged monitoring usually read about 60 degrees tied to the pipe. Not accurate, but good enough for me to know we were in no danger of freezing - all from inside the warm cozy house. I don't know if my kludge was monitoring the temp of the pipe it was sitting one, or the general air temp inside the service panel. Didn't matter - whatever it was monitoring was good enough for my needs.

 

[Peanut]

@Haertig That's why i got extra sensors, thought they might come in handy. If not i have spares.

Also, i checked the weather underground. There's not a single reporting station in the county where i live. Only one within 60miles that is of interest to me. It's readings are all over the place this morning. I think they have a bad sensor or a bad location for a sensor.

 

[Haertig]

There's not a single reporting station in the county where i live.

That probably means you live quite a bit farther away from your neighbors than I do. I'll trade you ten million nearby weather stations for your wide open spaces! The one you found 60 miles away ... that one would probably be pretty useless for you even if it did work.