Nick's crAZed Ramblings: 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