I think one of my family members would enjoy having a personal weather station, so I’m looking for recommendations! Are you a weather geek? If so, what kind of setup do you have, or do you have on your personal wishlist?
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From time to time over the years, I’ve considered establishing a personal weather station. It is, however, something to which I’ve not yet gotten around.
When I was more actively considering it, I hung around some on Weather Underground’s site.
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Check their buyer’s guide: PWS Network Overview | Weather Underground
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Have you bought one personally? I was kind of hoping for a conversation with someone who has, not just a link.
I was interested in this, yet found that most of the local weather station information could be found less than a mile away at my local airport, available through AccuWeather. Yahoo Weather uses the same data, fewer adds, pleasing (to me) design. Then I learned that one metric of weather information is truly hyper-local: rainfall and precipitation. There is an international citizen science organization that collects and reports precipitation data, called: Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRAHS). Every morning (when I’m home) I step outside and, using my CoCoRAHS-approved-nonelectronic device, report data that is shared with the National Weather Service. Worth looking into!
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I’m probably too late to be useful for this discussion, but that’s never stopped me in the past 
Last year we bought a WeatherFlow Tempest (highly recommended by Mike’s Weather Page on Facebook; sometimes he posts discount codes on his FB feed for the Tempest - he’s someone I really respect when the state of Florida is facing bad weather. He is usually very accurate and honest, and I respect his opinion. We don’t live in Fl, but we visit there just about every year - we just tend to avoid the region where the mouse lives 
). (We were in Florida for several weeks earlier back in Feb/Mar which is why I am late to post).
The Tempest wasn’t cheap, but not nearly as expensive as, say, a Davis weatherstation, which are top of the line and used by many in farming… we have a son in law who works for a big seed company in the Heartland, and uses Davis weatherstations all the time when he is working with farmers.
It doesn’t have any moving parts - sensors are haptic - for wind & rain, and it has sensors for temp, humidity, and lightning. I don’t understand the tech behind it, but it works and has no moving parts. Oh, it is pretty accurate for rainfall, but it won’t measure snowfall (this is a known issue). I’m old school for snowfall - we tape a ruler to the umbrella mount for the deck table, which works just fine. Not that we get much snow in our area lately…
As far as accuracy, some users love it, and some don’t. Those who don’t like it say it’s just a glorified expensive thermometer. Accuracy of wind speed in particular depends on where the outside unit is placed - it needs to be far enough away from any obstructions - buildings, trees, etc., and mounted high enough in the air to be as accurate as possible. This is probably a general rule of thumb for any weather station. It seems on target with temperature and rainfall; wind speed is kind of hit or miss. We mounted ours on a pole off of the deck on the back of the house about 11 ft off the ground, and depending on the wind direction, it can be right on or about 50% low to what the bigger weather websites might report. There are two parts - the outside unit with mounting hardware, and an indoor sending unit which connects the outside unit to our WIFI.
This model can connect to online weather services like Weather Underground. I got it set up on WU, and it was simple enough. There are enough user forums around - I joined the FB Official Tempest Community, which seems pretty active with 6.5k members; some of the users on there are very knowledgeable.
Glad to send anyone a link to our Tempest, just send me a private message. Didn’t really want to post it in a public forum. The access is read-only, so not too concerned with someone mucking something up. (And yes, it shows our location, but again, not too concerned. We live in central PA, and have great neighbors. All our neighbors have big mean dogs and like to hunt).
Hope this helps someone. If you want more info, just search for “weatherflow” in your preferred search engine, and one of the hits will be to a marketing page to buy one.
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Not too late at all! I think for a long time before making a purchase! Thanks for taking the time to write all that up!
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