Household Weather Stations: 5 Steps to More Fun

Personal weather stations are great tools and can be a lot of fun to track. Most of today’s household weather stations have so many features. Here’s a list of things you can do to make sure you get the most out of your household weather station.

#1 – Use Proper Siting To Increase Accuracy

When you first get your weather station, the most important thing you can do during the installation process is ensure proper “siting”. Siting is locating the optimal area for the weather station for accuracy purposes. Where a household weather stations sit can be as important, or even more important, than which one you buy. In other words, if you put them under a tree, you won’t get accurate readings.

There are guidelines to follow for proper siting. Our version of these guidelines can be found here. Don’t worry if you can’t follow them 100%, they are just guidelines, but do the best you can. Some things are more important than others and most of them seem like common sense once you read through it. For example, you don’t want the anemometer that takes wind measurements to be obstructed by an overshadowing house…DUH!

#2 – Connect it to the internet

Most household weather stations have this capability. In fact, some of them come with the ability to do this out of the box such as AcuRite’s Atlas and Ambient’s WS-2000 weather station. For others, you might need to add a component to make it happen. In either case, connecting it to the internet will really open up the possibilities for you.

Most of the manufacturers have their own personal weather station network or app. A few examples would be Davis’ WeatherLink, Acurite’s MyAcuRite, and Ambient’s AmbientWeather.net. These all allow you to remotely view your weather data from anywhere you have an internet connection. Most also provide you with historical graphs and trends based on your own weather data.

In addition to the weather station manufacturer’s networks, the most popular network for uploading and logging weather data to is the Weather Underground. With over 250,000 personal weather stations connected to this network globally, users visiting the site can get hyperlocal weather at any time of day or night. Connecting and sharing with the WU will provide you with comprehensive dashboards that help parse your data in ways that make sense.

#3 – Set Up Alerts on Your Smartphone

This is along the same lines as #2. Most of the weather station apps and networks mentioned above also have the ability to send alerts directly to your smartphone for things like high/low temperature, humidity, rainfall, no rain for “x” amount of days, heat index, “feels like” temperature, etc. Consumers that set these alerts tend to get more use and value out of their weather station. It’s an investment and you should get good use out of it.

#4 – Maintain it for Longevity/Accuracy

By regularly maintaining your household weather station, you’ll increase both its accuracy and its life. Maintenance on most household weather stations is little more than just keeping it clean and using common sense. For more details, please see our Weather Station Maintenance Tips.

#5 – Have fun with your Household Weather Station

Yes, it’s a tool and yes it helps you with the weather, but there’s so much more you can do with household weather stations. You can share your weather data with your neighbors and friends. It can be an educational tool to teach your children more about weather. You could compare your data to the local weatherman’s forecasts. If you’re going to spend the money investing in a weather station, have some fun and enjoy it.

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