Backyard Weather Stations

For those who want to learn more about backyard weather stations

I decided to get a backyard weather station a couple of years ago because of our location on the Gulf Coast and the lack of real time local information about weather. The school has WeatherBug but is subject to outages during holidays and summer months.

I purchased a LaCrosse WS-2308 Professional Weather Station and it reports every few seconds to http://wunderground.com under the zip code 77623 which is our home.

If you are a weather nut like me...I recommend you installing a station yourself. The main issue is getting it high enough to be above the roof and catch all of the wind and rain. My house is tall and I must use a long ladder to service the station..keep that in mind. The unit is wired to the display or can be wireless from the outside unit to the display in the house. More on installation to follow.

The LaCrosse WS-2308 Weather System from

Parts:

The display is the heart of the station. It will provide visual and audible alerts to conditions in your yard. The display is attached to my old laptop and updates the local weather every few seconds, 24 hours a day unless there is a glitch in the system.

The Outdoor Temperature / Humidity sensor is wired to the other sensors and reports via cable or wireless (330') to the Display Unit. This unit is located under the house, one foot from the exterior wall where it reads temp and humidity about 18" above ground level. This location was picked to prevent overheating from the sun. Readings should be more accurate than if I placed it in the direct sunlight.

The wind sensor is similar to this one with the speed cups being of a different design. It is wired to the "Outdoor Remote Unit" and reports wind direction and speed. My wind and rain guage is located about 2' above the peak of the roof and about 25' from the ground.There are trees in the area mostly 28'-40' from the sensor located to the North and West of the wind sensor.

The "self dumping" rain sensor is wired to the "Outdoor Remote Unit" and provides constant rain data to the system

The system requires software, included, called HeavyWeather which will provide a display on your computer of the weather data. If you want to report weather to Wunderground.com or WeatherBug an additional software can be purchased ($60) for that purpose from AmbientWeather.

If you only want to view the display unit and don't want to get into the weather distribution business this package is all you need. Current price from http://ambientweather.com is about $99.