Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Home Weather Stations

JeffA and I derailed the SpaceX thread with a discussion of home weather stations. He and I both use units from Davis. I have a Vantage VUE and he has a Vantage Pro. Both are nearly professional quality with tons of features. I also have a unit by Accu-Rite that I have mounted in the kitchen. It's more basic, showing indoor and outdoor temps, humidity, barometer, moon phase, time and date. Of all the many cheap units I've owned over the years, the Accu-Rite is the best so far - but it is nowhere near the unit that my Davis is.

Any of you have a home weather station? How do you use it?

Nah. We just walk outside and see what the weather is doing. 🤪

I have a basic Oregon Scientific but wanting the Ambient Weather WS-2902C WiFi Smart Weather Station. Just haven't pulled the trigger yet.

ETA: our weather has been all over the place this year, would have loved to have kept track of the precipitation.

I have an indoor/outdoor thermometer. Inside the "receiving" unit there lives a tiny little man who randomly creates a number for the outside temperature, much in the manner that the National Weather Circus employs to issue warnings.

I became a weather nut because I was going to be a pilot. Took Meteorology 101 in college (which my advisor could NOT understand, being I was an English Lit major!) But that course paid off well, as I could ask intelligent questions of USAF weather guys, and interpret the answers.

It's just an interest now, of course. But my Davis is one of the first things I check every morning, and I look at it many times during the day as I sit here at my desktop 'pooter. That and the Weather Service website. But the original and still champion weather device is still the good old Mk-1 eyeball. From my deck, I can see a darkening in the southwest, which means we might - oh, PLEASE! - finally get a few drops. Lately, the forecast has been T'storms all over Utah EBO*

*Everywhere But Ogden.

DAVIS WETAHER STATIONS

I use the Davis Vantage Pro2. It is a lying SOB. It tells me only 5.15 inches of rain has fell here, year to date....


Oh wait. Maybe it's right. We ARE in frigging drought.....

Accu-Rite here. Similar to yours RR.

I use an Accurite and so far I don't think it's lied to me, been pretty good.

The Davis units are the best bang for the buck if it's near your house.
Out in our fields we've used Climate Minder, Ranch Systems, and AgSense.
These all cost thousands of dollars and use cell reception to send the info to a desktop. Honestly, the Davis systems do 90% of what these do.

I look to the south or west sky

I can guess with the best of 'em

here.....cloudy & gusty winds

sunset at 2042 hrs

tomorrow......sane old schidt as today

I have a LaCrosse unit that I can't say is dead reliable, but the customer service is exceptional. Two new wind vanes, and a base unit no questions. Reminds me, the rain gauge quit again.

Glad you're happy with them.

Rain gauge took a dive a year or so back, when I checked into it online support for that model had been discontinued. Kinda sucked being as how it was only about 2.5-3 years old.

the rest, including the anemometer still work OK, although I had to move the temp sending unit closer to the house. Under the back patio actually, which sits to the West where the sun beams in after 1600 hrs or so.




Ha, we're winning the drought race here. 3.90" year to date ! According to the NWS at the airport station in town. Probably drier here as they had a couple of rain events this past week. About 0.04" total over 3 days.

we had enough to show the drops in the dust on the vehicles.


Based on y'all's recommendations, I may look into those Davis units in the future.

I am going to derail this thread just a bit.

When I was a kid (1940's) I remember my grandmother having a weather indicator that was similar to a cuckoo clock. It had a board type ledge that would protrude from the front of it sticking out at 90 degree angle from the face, when it was supposed to rain there was a figure (an old woman if I remember correctly) would come out and when it was supposed to be nice it would rotate back into the clock 180 degrees and the board would there was a different figure would emerge (can't remember what it was).

I hadn't thought of that for years but now that I have I am wondering how it worked? I am also wondering if anyone else remembers one of those.

Oh! By the way. I am using a 20 year old Lacrosse and it is good enough for what I need to know.

drover

edit - google found a similar looking one but it operates on batteries which still leaves me wondering how the old ones worked, I am positive that they did not run on AA's in the 1940's

https://www.amazon.com/Trenkle-Excl...&hvtargid=pla-300457826782&psc=1

Sound like neat instruments.

I just look out the window.

There's no comparison. I also had a LaCrosse that died a premature death - and was inaccurate at the best of times.

I have worked as a meteorologist for over 32 years now. Out of the three meteorologists I supervise, two are former A.F. Weather Officers. I will retire in 3 months after working with state government for 30 years. I am SO looking forward to retirement and doing my own thing from then on.
I also taught Meteorology 101 when I was in graduate school at N.C. State.

Davis Instruments is good stuff. As is R.M. Young. Actually, many of the off-the-shelf weather stations are pretty decent these days. What used to cost thousands of dollars can now be purchased for a few hundred.
And I don't even have weather station - heck, not even a rain gauge! Blasphemy, for sure.

Smart man for following the National Weather Service - that's where I go to to get my forecasts (my work is in air pollution modeling, not forecasting - I can't forecast my way out of a wet paper sack). One of the folks I supervise (female AF weather officer augments the forecasters down the hall from time to time). The NWS folks work on preparing forecasts 24 hours a day, so they are usually your best bet for an accurate forecast.

Rain gauge only

Oh, just as a point of info: relative humidity sensors (hygrometers) in any weather station, home or otherwise, are the least accurate and reliable measurement in the system - nothing more than a decent estimate. "Ground truth" is a sling psychrometer.

If you live in Alabama you'll only rely on James Spann for your weather information, he'll let you know there might be a chance of rain right after a tornado blows your fuqking trailer into Mississipi.

We're so dry out here, when mine reads 5% and the NWS one in town says 6% I figure we're pretty close to actual conditions