It's All About the Weather (Station)

OK, so it's a geek thing. I wanted a weather station to report environmental conditions here at the Hound Hacienda. After a lot of research I decided on a Davis VantageVue. It's US made, accurate and has a self-contained instrumentation unit. The indoor console is detailed, has a nice interface, and can be linked to the computer to post data to the internet. I've had the unit running for a couple of weeks now in a temporary location while I decided on the final location and mounting.

I decided on a 20 foot telescoping aluminum flagpole for the mounting. I use an identical one to mount the radio repeater antenna, and it has been up for 5 years with no issue. It's a simple task to dig the hole and set the mounting sleeve in concrete, then drop in the flagpole. An added benefit is that you can easily bring the pole back down for maintenance, it's just about 6 feet tall when collapsed.

The location was selected to keep the station out of the influence of the house and nearby trees and shrubs, for both rain collection and wind measurements. It's recommended to have the wind sensor at least 4 feet above rooflines and a distance equal or greater than twice the height of the building. I chose a site in open land 100 feet away from the house.

In addition to the local display on my desk, I send data to the internet and to several sites that collect weather data and display it for personal, commercial and statistical use. At the bottom of this page are the various links to these sites. I participate in CWOP, the Citizen's Weather Observation Program, and also send to the Weather Underground (Wunderground) site.

LIVE DATA BELOW




Close-up view of instrument package


Instruments on top of collapsed pole


Making sure that the system is level


A person for some size and scale


System fully up and operational

LINKS
MesoWest surface map with weather stations listed
My station is in the center of the map. Zoom in to see more details. There are two in Clarkdale, mine is the one that is lower on the screen

MesoWest Station Details for Station D4348 (me)

MesoWest Current Conditions for D4348

Weather Conditions with graphs

Living in Clarkdale - Weather

A Fresh Start Today

Today started better than yesterday...the snow is clean and refreshing. Sadly yesterday began with the lady next door taking her life. She went outside and shot herself. She was a renter and had been there since September...yet we had never met her. I only saw her outdoors once, briefly as we drove out. I couldn't have picked her out of a lineup if challenged.

Police, fire and EMS came, whisked her away. I had to go into the house (we have the key, owners are in CA) and locate her purse so they could ID her. They rushed her to the hospital, then airlifted her to the trauma center. I understand she's brain dead and on life support until her son can arrive from overseas. Very very sad. What's stuck in my mind is cleaning up the side yard after everyone left, didn't want to leave that there as a reminder.

Sad that we never had a chance to know her, I always looked for her when I was outside to say "hi", but the only hint that she was even living there was that the trash cans went in and out each week, and I could hear the central vacuum running from time to time.

May she rest in peace.