I admit it. I still struggle with perfectionism. The fact the weather guessers are so far off so frequently irritates me maybe more than the average person. To be more specific, when the internet weather feeds and local news are off from my local temperature, snow, and rain readings, it makes me a little crazy. Not to mention if I try to plan some work around the house or outings. I want to know what the temperature will be and if it will rain or snow and how much.
To relieve my compulsions, I decided to invest in a Personal Weather Station (PWS). Most city folks probably have many of these around them, but in our case now that we live out in the sticks a ways, there are not many near us. The ones that are near us are still 10-20 miles away and are at lower elevation and different geography (over 600 feet elevation difference as well). We've found that the reports from those are always at least 2 degrees off in temperature, and often 2-3 inches less in snowfall predictions. I don't know about rain yet, it's too cold here for rain!
Yes, it's really -12F here (-24C) brrrr...
So, to satisfy my own need for more accurate temperature measurements, and to hopefully contribute to the other locals, I invested in a PWS. I installed this today and then spent a couple hours configuring the software, updating the firmware, and mounting the fancy sensor.
Eventually, when the ground thaws this spring, I will mount this properly with an in-ground pole or similar mount. For now, I just rigged it up by screwing the mount onto a portable sawhorse and put it out in the yard. It's important to have it above or away from house/trees to get accurate measurements without blocking the wind/rain, etc.
One of the coolest things is that this has a radio frequency connection from the outside sensor to the provided console that provides near realtime (every few seconds) updates. This has a really nice little tablet sized screen that lets me look at a glance at the temperature (outdoors and indoors) sunrise, moonrise, humidity, barometer, UV index, precipitation, and wind (both direction and speed).
The other benefit is that it also links and sends regular updates to Ambient.com, WUnderground.com and other major weather information sources that provide me with a more personalized view, and contribute to many others in consolidated larger area forecasts and predictions. I'm hoping this will result in more accurate predictions for my specific area, but it's nice just to have the more personalized view (and more accurate data for my OCD tendencies).
I did a little research and WUnderground currently has over 250,000 PWS reporting into it. Amazing how these local individual contributions add up to providing more accurate and localized weather knowledge and predictions.
One of the other side benefits, is that I have realtime auto-updating wind direction and speed readouts that I can view on the console, from my phone, tablet, or computer while I'm at the backyard range shooting. Instead of mounting a Kestrel on a tripod or holding it up all the time, I have that info instantly available all the time. Great tool for training and learning what the wind speed is, but kind of cool to just have it available now all the time without additional setup.
I just love the way I can now select my own "Station" from WUndergound or the other weather sites and have my own customized data and predictions. Anyone else do this, or do you just rely on provided info?