Who all has a personal weather station?

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MesquiteMan

MesquiteMan

Retired Head Moderator
Joined
Oct 18, 2005
Messages
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Location
San Marcos, TX, USA.
I have always been interested in the weather and love storms. I have had various different rain gauges and temperature/hygrometer units over the years but never a weather station. Well, my 6 year old daughter, Katelyn, is quite interested in the weather so a couple of months ago, I jumped in a bought a Davis Vantage Vue personal weather station.

Katelyn helped me dig the hole and install the system and enjoys looking at the display every day to see what the weather is doing. I have found it really interesting having all the accurate data, especially temperature, rain, and pressure.

When I bought my system, I also bought a cable to hook it to the computer. I am running a program called Cumulus that pulls the data from my console and records it. I am also a member of the Citizens Weather Observation Program and my system reports my data to CWOP every few minutes. This data is then sent on to NOAA and other agencies. I also report my data to Weather Underground and Weatherbug every few minutes.

Here is a link to my weather data on Weather Underground:

Hunter Ridge-KTXSANMA11-DW9728 weather data

Here are a few pictures of my Vantage Vue installation for anyone interested. It is in a clearing in my back yard and is properly sited for optimal rain data collection (5' above the ground).

distant.jpg


close3.jpg


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My dad would love one of those, might have to consider it for fathers day. Me, I'm pretty low key. I have a weather dog. If she comes back wet it's raining, if she comes back white it's snowing and if she doesn't come back at all it's windy! :biggrin:
 
That's terrific, Cutris! You and your daughter will enjoying having this very accurate information for your immediate location readily available!

One suggestion: in a big thunderboomer, DISCONNECT the cable from the computer.....DAMHIKT:)
 
Nice setup. I'm interested in the weather. Just 18 months ago I was the Emergency Coordinator for Winnabago County (wisconsin) and a long time weather spotter / ARES/RACES member. Unfortunately now that I'm in an apartment I can't have a weather station or HAM radio antenna.
 
pensmyth said:
My dad would love one of those, might have to consider it for fathers day. Me, I'm pretty low key. I have a weather dog. If she comes back wet it's raining, if she comes back white it's snowing and if she doesn't come back at all it's windy! :biggrin:
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If you do consider one, take a close look at the Davis systems. There are cheaper ones out there but the quality of a Davis is hard to beat. Plus, they are made in the USA! I could have bought a system for about $100 cheaper but choose to buy the better quality American made rather than Chinese. I bought mine from Rainman Weather. They list the minimum advertized price as set by Davis but if you use the coupon deals box in the lower right, you can get it for about $100 less.
 
I have a weather station and LOML checks it as much as I do. It also has a rain gauge that does not hold an amount, but measures as water passes through it. It is pretty good at letting us know when it is about the rain or when the rain is probably going to stop. It lets us know the highs and lows as well as the current inside and outside temps, if the temps are rising or dropping. Wind speed, direction and Humidity also.

I know that your daughter will enjoy the one you have. They are fun to have!
 
Have a great personal weather station for my android phone. It has a working weather alert section that really works. It is the nicest one so far that I have tried. Have had it in use for about 2 weeks, no problems or bugs as of yet.
1Weather for Android
If you have an android phone it may be worth a look.
:clown:
 
Thanks

Thank you Curtis --- you reminded me that my spouse would love one of those things and it is affordable. We had an anamometer and rain gauge and thermometer at our previous residence but never an all in one kind of thing.
 
Is that just a USB cable or is it something I'd need to get from Davis?
MesquiteMan said:
I have always been interested in the weather and love storms. I have had various different rain gauges and temperature/hygrometer units over the years but never a weather station. Well, my 6 year old daughter, Katelyn, is quite interested in the weather so a couple of months ago, I jumped in a bought a Davis Vantage Vue personal weather station.

Katelyn helped me dig the hole and install the system and enjoys looking at the display every day to see what the weather is doing. I have found it really interesting having all the accurate data, especially temperature, rain, and pressure.

When I bought my system, I also bought a cable to hook it to the computer. I am running a program called Cumulus that pulls the data from my console and records it. I am also a member of the Citizens Weather Observation Program and my system reports my data to CWOP every few minutes. This data is then sent on to NOAA and other agencies. I also report my data to Weather Underground and Weatherbug every few minutes.

Here is a link to my weather data on Weather Underground:

Hunter Ridge-KTXSANMA11-DW9728 weather data

Here are a few pictures of my Vantage Vue installation for anyone interested. It is in a clearing in my back yard and is properly sited for optimal rain data collection (5' above the ground).

distant.jpg


close3.jpg


close1.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Smitty37 said:
Is that just a USB cable or is it something I'd need to get from Davis?
Click to expand...

Smitty, There is a fellow at wxforum.com that makes and sells a cable to go from the console to the computer. It is just a cable, though, and not a data logger. It is about $25 I believe rather than the $100+ from Davis. The difference is that if you want to capture all of your data, you will need to have your computer on and your software running at all times. The Davis data logger stores the data for when the computer is off and then sends it when connected. I choose the cable since my computer is always on and I wanted to be reporting data in real time rather than hours after if the computer if off. Of course, if you use the Davis logger and have the computer on at all times, then it will be reporting in real time and will provide a backup for when the computer is off.

I had a power outage a few weeks ago and of course, all of my data during the outage was lost where if I had the logger from Davis, it would have been logged since the console has battery backup. No big deal for me, though, and certainly worth loosing a few hours of data for a significant lower cost.

If you want to go that route, let me know and I can get you the fellow's e-mail address for you.
 
micharms said:
Nice setup Curtis. I got carried away and have the Davis Vantage Pro2. weather has fascinated me for years and in my youth I even researched becoming a meteorologist.

Michael
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I would love to have had the Pro2 but just could not justify the cost! I originally started out looking at the Fine Offset PWS stations at around $100 but ended up deciding I would rather buy USA instead of China so I stretched my budget for the Vue at about $250!
 
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Thank you. What you mentioned about capturing the data answered another question and just the console will be all we need. We're not going to get involved with sending the data out anywhere, we'll just use it ourselves.
MesquiteMan said:
Smitty37 said:
Is that just a USB cable or is it something I'd need to get from Davis?
Click to expand...

Smitty, There is a fellow at wxforum.com that makes and sells a cable to go from the console to the computer. It is just a cable, though, and not a data logger. It is about $25 I believe rather than the $100+ from Davis. The difference is that if you want to capture all of your data, you will need to have your computer on and your software running at all times. The Davis data logger stores the data for when the computer is off and then sends it when connected. I choose the cable since my computer is always on and I wanted to be reporting data in real time rather than hours after if the computer if off. Of course, if you use the Davis logger and have the computer on at all times, then it will be reporting in real time and will provide a backup for when the computer is off.

I had a power outage a few weeks ago and of course, all of my data during the outage was lost where if I had the logger from Davis, it would have been logged since the console has battery backup. No big deal for me, though, and certainly worth loosing a few hours of data for a significant lower cost.

If you want to go that route, let me know and I can get you the fellow's e-mail address for you.
Click to expand...
 
Here is my CWOP/MADIS Quality Control information page for anyone interested.

MADIS stands for Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System. This is what it is all about (from the MADIS website)

The demands for finer scale meteorological services have increasingly required higher resolution observations to initialize and evaluate weather and climate models, applications, and products. In response to these demands, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Research (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Global Systems Division (GSD) developed the Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) to collect, integrate, quality control (QC), and distribute observations from NOAA and non-NOAA organizations. MADIS leverages partnerships with international agencies; federal, state, and local agencies (e.g. state Departments of Transportation); universities; volunteer networks; and the private sector (e.g. airlines, railroads) to integrate observations from their stations with those of NOAA to provide a finer density, higher frequency observational database for use by the greater meteorological community. MADIS observational products and services were first provided to the public in July of 2001.
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DW9728
 
Smitty, yes, the console will collect and store the data and let you see highs and lows, I believe, for a year. The nice thing about a PWS is that you don't have to go out in the bad weather to dump your rain gauge! It will also tell you the rain rate during a storm and track how much rain per day, month, and year as well as wind speeds and direction, pressure, and temperature inside and out.

We recently had a rain storm with 5.28" per hour peak rain rate. Of course, the advantage of having the cable is that you will be able to see more about your data with the software than the console will be able to provide. You do not have to share your data with anyone.

Here are a couple of graphs from my software. You may not be interested in this kind of data but if you are, you will need the cable. BTW, the software I am running is open source.

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Been wondering about a weather station. Right now I use my body as a weather station. As the barometer falls I start feeling it in my shoulders, then wrist, neck, right knee, right foot...

I knew my misspent youth was tuning my body for something.
 
Haynie said:
Been wondering about a weather station. Right now I use my body as a weather station. As the barometer falls I start feeling it in my shoulders, then wrist, neck, right knee, right foot...

I knew my misspent youth was tuning my body for something.
Click to expand...
I wish my aches and pains only happened when the weather changes....:rolleyes:
 
Thank you

Thank's Curtis...I think I'll get the station and see what happens. If we decide we want to chart things I check with you on the software and the cable.
MesquiteMan said:
Smitty, yes, the console will collect and store the data and let you see highs and lows, I believe, for a year. The nice thing about a PWS is that you don't have to go out in the bad weather to dump your rain gauge! It will also tell you the rain rate during a storm and track how much rain per day, month, and year as well as wind speeds and direction, pressure, and temperature inside and out.

We recently had a rain storm with 5.28" per hour peak rain rate. Of course, the advantage of having the cable is that you will be able to see more about your data with the software than the console will be able to provide. You do not have to share your data with anyone.

Here are a couple of graphs from my software. You may not be interested in this kind of data but if you are, you will need the cable. BTW, the software I am running is open source.

attachment.php


attachment.php
Click to expand...
 
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