As a dispatcher, I’m almost required to be somewhat of a weather geek. I just posted a new weather page that shares some of my thoughts on weather and a few interesting links.

Lately I’ve been doing research on home weather stations. “Weather station” is a broad term that could cover anything from an outdoor thermometer to a $5000 professional-quality set of sensors that feeds data to the National Weather Service. I have one made by Oregon Scientific that reports indoor/outdoor temp and humidity, air pressure, and atomic time, which it picks up via radio signal. I LOVE it except that some evil person stole my wireless temp/humidity sensor. It also tries to forecast the weather, but since it only knows the data it can sense, the forecasts are usually wrong. =)

I looked into upgrading to a station that measures winds and rainfall and beams the data into my house. Then I realized two things: 1) at our house, the best place to install an anemometer (wind gauge) is 6-10 feet above the roof ridge, and 2) even then, with all the trees we have in the area, the wind data wouldn’t be that accurate. So now I’m looking into another type of station that picks up a REAL forecast and current conditions via radio or the internet and organizes them in a convenient display on your desk or countertop.

In case you want to geek out on weather with me, WeatherBuffs and WeatherShack are both good sites that specialize in these products and include some information to help you decide.