Geekery: I Bought a Weather Station

A home weather station, that is. I've always wanted some sort of weather equipment so I could have temperature and humidity information at a glance, and being a big-time weather geek, I wanted a good one. Well, I didn't want to skimp, so I went for it and got a Davis Vantage Pro 2 Wireless.





The dang thing does it all. It will more or less tell you everything an airport weather station will except for visibility and cloud cover (those sensors cost tens of thousands of dollars). Along with the items pictured above, I also bought the connector and software necessary to share my data online, and also a specialized wireless router which will allow me to mount the display console in my living room and retransmit the data to the router in my office, which will be connected to the computer (and the internet) 24/7. So...you can imagine it got pretty pricey. But, weather is both a passion and a hobby for me, and there's nothing wrong with dropping some coin on your hobbies.

Given the fact I live in a housing addition with strict covenants and restrictions, I was very concerned about whether or not they would let me install the outdoor instruments. I checked with both the developer and an association trustee, and they didn't think there would be a problem. In fact, the small size of the instruments (especially the anemometer) might allow me to take some liberties. I'm also concerned about keeping those ubiquitous paper wasps from building nests in the outdoor sensors.

A neat thing about this setup is I will be able to check things like rainfall rates and rainfall storm totals remotely, provided I have internet access, which means I'll have a much better idea of potential basement flooding crises when I'm out of town. Also I'll be able to provide data to the area mesonet, which is composed of data from both airport stations and personal weather stations. If I mount my anemometer high enough, the data might even be useful to the National Weather Service (it's unlikely I'll do this at my current residence).

Another result of this will be a second website that will display all my weather data in real time. My data will also be seen on The Weather Underground, and probably some other sites as well. This new website would be a sister site to this one, but this site might eventually become a segment of the new one...we'll see. In any event, this will be a fun new toy. I just ordered it tonight, so it will probably several days before I get it, and several weeks before it's operational.