I also have the other type of weather station that has its own sensors for wind speed and direction, rainfall, temperature, and humidity. The sensor array gets installed in the landscape or on the roof. Some models include an indoor tablet for displaying the readings, and others only transfer the information to a cellphone, and some do both.
Some weather stations have optional sensors. You may be able to measure air quality, pond, or swimming pool temperature, the temperature inside a freezer or refrigerator, and even the temperature underground.
In this day and age, the majority of the sensors are accurate, but location plays a huge role in measuring weather. For instance, the National Weather Service says that temperature sensors should be 5 feet above the ground, plus or minus 1 foot. They must be installed inside a sheltered, ventilated box that’s too complicated to describe in this article. The box must be at least 100 feet from pavement, at least four times the height of any nearby objects (20 feet away from a 5-foot fence), they can’t be on rooftops, and there are more regulations for the temperature sensor. Rain gauges have a similar set of rules. They’re to be 3 feet off the ground and not near anything that causes air turbulence or eddy currents in the air.
The home weather station sensor array will have all of the sensors on a single battery-operated device. Setting it up at the proper height for the thermometer won’t be setting it up at the proper height for the rain gauge. My entire backyard is fenced and wooded. There are no locations that are far enough from obstacles or out of the shade of trees. The only clear area for the wind speed and direction and the rain gauge is on the house roof.
Since it’s battery operated, it sometimes dies and I don’t get around to replacing it because it’s up on the roof. I built a new garage with electrical outlets at the top for Christmas lights, and I can power the weather station that way, but in five years, I still haven’t gotten around to doing it. With the station on the roof and being surrounded with trees, I sometimes find that the rain gauge is clogged and I need to go up on the roof to clean it out.
The battery-operated sensors occasionally give odd readings as the batteries wear out. My greenhouse sensor gave several negative-50-degree warnings this summer when the temperature was in the positive 80s or 90s.
The three most popular home weather station companies are Ambient Weather, AcuRite, and La Crosse Technology. Before purchasing a station, check out one of the weather networks that connect and display the weather information from many home and professional stations. Look at the websites for WeatherBug, Weathercloud, and Weather Underground. You may find that your local school and some of your neighbors are already connected to one of these networks and that you don’t need your own station.
After installing your own station, you may find—as with any new toy—that you look for the results very often but that after a while, you only look to see what the rainfall total at home is while you’re at work. Some of the stations produce graphs of the measurements so that you can keep track of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly changes.
Before you buy a station for someone else, determine which station and accessories that they may need and which network they'd like to connect to.
