Weather station update

// January 26th, 2009 // family

So the weather station was working flawlessly. In fact, it’s been a blast so far. The rain we got last week registered as 0.08 inches, which is not a lot, but it was sure fun to see the little gauge tick a few times as I heard it coming down outside.

And today we had some record-breaking wind speeds. By record-breaking, I mean by my own weather station in the limited time I’ve had it. We had a gust of 14 mph earlier in the month, but that was bested by the 18.1 mph we got today.

The weather station uploads to Wunderground.com and so far, not including Monday, these are the trends for the month:

Now, as I said in the opening, the thing was working flawlessly. And in fact, it still is, but there is a problem with my placement of the temperature sensor.

I have it up on the roof, in a little cove that faces north. It doesn’t get direct sunlight, which is a bonus. However, a few days last week I noticed that my temperature HIGHS were running about 5-6 degrees higher than the two OTHER weather stations that are within two miles of me.

I took up another temp gauge to the spot on the roof and sat there for a bit. Sure enough, both of them matched. So that meant my sensor was OKAY.

But what it really meant was that my spot for it sucked. There must be some sort of heat bubble that forms up there from sunlight being reflected off the ceramic tiles.

So I’m looking for a new spot and will try and do that this weekend. I’m thinking the east side of the house, in the backyard, but who knows.

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