Merits of owning a weather station

Rob Keeble

Member
Messages
12,633
Location
GTA Ontario Canada
We had 55 mm of rain this past 24 hours. Now i know it aint what some of you been getting but what i enjoyed this last night and early morning was tracking the rate of rain.

I am fascinated by the weather now that i live in a 4 seasons climate with the possibility of all those seasons on one day sometimes.

The issue is you see it raining, you hear it in terms of noise if its hard, but the question to me is not just " So how much rain did we have" and you look at the rain gauge, but what is hard and soft rain.

On my weather station i can see in real time the rate of rain in either mm/hour or inches per hour. I have it set to metric cause i use it to compare the weather channels version.

This morning we had one point where the rate of rain was 90mm/hour. Now one can do the computations and say hey if it keeps on like that.....

and rather than just saying its raining hard one has some quantification for what it means and then if you have prior reference of the effect of that kind of deluge, you know whats happening out there.

It takes the subjectivity out of it.

The joke i found this morning is my unit has built in forecasting and when something like this occurs, it also has funny comments stored.

i was surprized to see it saying "Its raining cats and dogs" when it was at the 90mm/hour rate. :rofl::rofl:

For your interest here is a pic of my weather station. Its a Davis vantage Pro2. Hope to get it live on the web before i kick the bucket. Then i can share it with my community cause the reference point for our weather on the news is pretty far away and has no bearing on whether you need to water the lawn based on rain you had recently.

The other thing i like is removing the "gut feel" aspect. When we say well we had more rain than last year or its colder than it was last winter. etc. With one of these storing the data you can compare it absolutely and realize you just aging and starting to feel it more.:rofl:
 
:thumb:

For me, Since we don't get much rain, I love tracking the wind and how strong it can get...

BTW, That's a darn nice station. I'd like to upgrade to that one of the days, but kind of have to wait until my current oregon scientific unit completely dies...
 
Well Jeff and Kevin what the heck am i doing sweating up here if its winter with the aircon on??:huh:

Methinks you need a refresher in geography. The ice age is over.:rofl::rofl: Just ask the polar bears.;)
 
All those fancy weather stations are nice, mine is the Indian rock weather station....a rock hanging from a string in the back yard.... if the rock is swinging, the wind's blowing.... it the rock is wet, it's raining... if the rock is white, it's snowing... if I can't see the rock, it's foggy....:D
 
All those fancy weather stations are nice, mine is the Indian rock weather station....a rock hanging from a string in the back yard.... if the rock is swinging, the wind's blowing.... it the rock is wet, it's raining... if the rock is white, it's snowing... if I can't see the rock, it's foggy....:D

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: I think I need to get me one of them.............I can see it now, people looking at it with question marks coming out of their heads and I give them your explanation:p:rofl::rofl::rofl: that's great:thumb:
 
I get a lot of enjoyment out of my weather station, although it's not as elaborate as your, Rob.

Mine has wind speed (but not direction) and rainfall amount (but not the rate). Still, it's informative, and kinda fun to see what's happening.
 
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