Show Off Your Personal Weather Station!

[Glacier]

Very nice! It's mounted study and secure for sure.

The anemometer is a tough one. I have mine up about 20 feet off the ground on my clothes line pole, but even then the trees around it block the wind. Even Environment Canada suffers from the same problem. For example, West Vancouver at 10m/33feet above the ground supposedly has an average wind speed of 4.67 km/h, making it one of the least windy place in Canada. Whistler is even less windy at 3.88 km/h, but these numbers are wrong because the trees around them are taller than 10m (see link above).

I like the bird spikes. I don't have those, but sort of wish I did sometimes. This Oregon dark-eyed junco was visiting my place yesterday, but thankfully my bird feeders distracted him from the rain gauge.

[Michael1]

Holy crap! $1000.00? Man mine cost about $200

Not saying price matters, but generally more expensive stations have better sensors and can be more reliable. My station was around the $1k mark as well, although it now lives in a box in my garage.

I was speaking of the Stevenson screen lol. With weather stations, you do get what you pay for. Not that cheaper ones are inaccurate, but they do not last long in extreme weather.

[Leighbugs]

Glacier, I definitely think the tall trees in my backyard interfere with wind readings. Either that or I really do live in a calm spot for winds. My top gust so far is 23km/hr which surprised me because on one of the arctic outflow days those trees were swaying like crazy and I figured it would be much higher. My husband says he can move the anemometer up higher onto the roof of the house rather than the top of the deck cover. It was just too dangerous with the snow and ice to climb up there. I wanted the rain gauge somewhere where I could get at it fairly easily myself to clear out any blockages from leaves and debris.

[rhondle]

Holy crap! $1000.00? Man mine cost about $200

Not saying price matters, but generally more expensive stations have better sensors and can be more reliable. My station was around the $1k mark as well, although it now lives in a box in my garage.

I was speaking of the Stevenson screen lol. With weather stations, you do get what you pay for. Not that cheaper ones are inaccurate, but they do not last long in extreme weather.

Oops, I didn't read thoroughly enough =) Indeed you were referring to Stevenson screens. Personally I'd say just build one, or get someone to build one.. would probably be fairly inexpensive. I built a simple radiation shield (page 1) out of inverted flower pot bases, it works great. Adding fan aspiration to it would be a breeze (pun intended) but I haven't found it to be necessary.

In regards to weather station sensor accuracy, it would be helpful to have a definition of what "accuracy" means. Perhaps also consistency, and reliability as well. And quality. There's probably a whole lot of metrics that apply to the differences between a $200 hobbyist station, vs a pro-hobbyist $1000 station vs a $10000+ professional automated station. From my experience, most sensors are quite accurate and inexpensive these days and a high price tag for a hobbyist station isn't really reflected in the parts cost, so I would be inclined to agree that a lower-end station's accuracy would be "good enough" in terms of accuracy. Of course, I am only guessing here, no real data unfortunately.

[rhondle]

Glacier, I definitely think the tall trees in my backyard interfere with wind readings. Either that or I really do live in a calm spot for winds. My top gust so far is 23km/hr which surprised me because on one of the arctic outflow days those trees were swaying like crazy and I figured it would be much higher. My husband says he can move the anemometer up higher onto the roof of the house rather than the top of the deck cover. It was just too dangerous with the snow and ice to climb up there. I wanted the rain gauge somewhere where I could get at it fairly easily myself to clear out any blockages from leaves and debris.

Ideally, the best spot for sensors for a weather station are as far away from trees and structures as possible. Of course, that's usually not possible in an urban environment so you just need to do the best that you can.

If you take a look at how I mounted my anemometer (page 1 of this thread) I got it up about 12' from the peak of the roof. I would have mounted it higher, but I didn't want to use cable stays and the flex in the PVC would have been too great. Although metal tubing would be more rigid, I used PVC as it is an electrical insulator. Since there is still some copper wire between the sensor and the junction box (mounted to the radiation shield below), it was grounded with a long length of heavy gauge copper wire.

This PDF has some pretty decent recommendations for mounting sensors in an urban setting. Basically, we all do the best we can in our individual situations. http://weather.gladstonefamily.net/CWOP-Siting.pdf