Weather Stations

Yesterday, I set out to add a weather report to a friend’s website.  She is serious about gardening, and her garden is in a seriously windy location.  In short weather — especially wind — is always an issue .

I knew nothing.  I expected to have to plug something in.  I think of a “weather station” as an institution, say, the Royal Naval Air Station near us, or the Met Office — national weather service (in Exeter).  So when I came across a button that said “Buy a weather station” it sounded like someone had a military base or post office for sale.  Not so. For around £200 to £400, you can have your own weather station, made up of sensors that “feed” measurements of temperature, light level, wind, humidity, air pressure, etc. into some processor — a computer or human brain.  Some even make forecasts.  So with fairly modest expense, we could set up a profoundly local report. But probably won’t.

Imagine everyone had a weather station. Or imagine everyone being a bit like a weather station, feeding streams of different kinds of data to various receiving mechanisms — other people, other processors. It gets very, very complicated. Forecasts?

Apart from that, the stations look wonderful!

The image is from the journal TechHive at https://www.techhive.com/article/3315622/acurite-atlas-weather-station-review.html