For some time I had a perfectly good,
cheap & cheerful WH1081 weather station from Maplins stores, (of fond
memory!) very much for my
own entertainment. It wasn't totally accurate or reliable and
required the odd repair from time to time but I
needed a new expensive Davis station like a hole in the head - but I
knew I was going to buy one ! By all accounts the data from the
Davis station should be pretty accurate. But I do not leave
my PC running continuously so data is updated on an infrequent and
irregular basis, in spite of what it might say on the opening page.
The 'realtime' gauges are probably anything but !
The fun bit to my mind is the graph display
when you click on 'Trends' at the bottom: then click on the individual
small graphs. Oh, if only I had had this when I did my Senior
Scout's Meteorology Badge in 1960 - to record the classic signs
of the passing of a front. All frontal depressions were
'classic'in those days if you are old enough to remember the
forecasts!
My location is between Dunstable and
Tring, at the foot
of the Chiltern Escarpment, UK, at approx 440 ft (135m)
above sea level. The wind sensors are about 4 feet above the house chimney tops (say
30ft agl), the other sensors and rain gauge are at about 9ft, just above the roof level
of the gable end of a ground floor extension. None of these are therefore
in 'approved' positions meteorologically speaking but are arranged
so that either the dog can't eat them or I can get at them for servicing without breaking my neck!
The station is a Davis Vantage Pro2 with a
Vantage Vue second console - also acting as the data connection for
the Weathelink PC link.
I am using the Cumulus software
(freeware*) available from http://sandaysoft.com/products/cumulus
.
. (*Actually
Donationware)
No forecasting is enabled. See the sites
below for much better forecasts than either Cumulus or I could produce.
In the unlikely event that you find this
site and should want to ask anything, email me at
tomsage@bayriver.co.uk