Finding the Right Home Weather Station
There are several dozen different personal home weather stations sold today. This can make choosing a home weather station a difficult task, especially one that is suited for your particular needs. Here are a few pointers that may help in the choice.
Technology has made several very significant advances in the area of home weather stations. The advances allow manufacturers to make home weather stations for less money, which in turn has lowered the price to a level that almost anybody can afford.
As the prices of weather stations have dropped, the number of products available have increased. There are so many good weather stations that making the correct choice has become very difficult.
While it is still possible to find a traditional rain gauge and a red alcohol filled thermometer, most home weather instruments today are digital in nature.
The digital readouts offer many advantages. The sensors can be placed outside but the digital readout can be seen inside your home. Some of the digital instruments allow information to be stored about past conditions right in the instrument. Others allow you to download the information to your personal computer.
Additionally, digital instruments offer more accurate readings as they are less susceptible to human error.
As you shop, you will find many cheap home weather stations. Most of them are made cheaply and are inaccurate. You should plan to spend several hundred dollars to get a decent home weather station. The product that you receive should last a long time and offer great customer support if something is not working correctly. You can also use the internet to find a product’s rank.
There are certain features that you should look for in a weather station. At a minimum, the station should offer the temperature, both inside and outside, as well as the relative humidity. In addition, you will want to know the wind speed and direction and have a rain gauge. Many home weather stations offer several other functions.
There are several major manufacturers of the personal weather stations. They include La Crosse, Davis Instruments, Oregon Scientific, Peet Bros. And Rainwise.
Rainwise is both most expensive and top of the line. Some stations from Rainwise cost several thousand dollars. LaCross instruments cost in the one hundred fifty to three hundred dollar range while the stations made by Davis Instruments are in the range of five to six hundred dollars.
Oregon Scientific makes instruments that are very much like LaCross and Peet Bros. are much like those manufactured by the Davis Instrument company.
If you want to transfer information to your home computer, you will have to look in the more expensive ranges.
If you are choosing a home weather station from any of these five companies, you will be choosing a station the is accurate and should give you many years of service. If you are tired of the forecast given on television that is always wrong, you can start to make your own models and forecasts as an amateur meteorologist. You may have just as good a chance as the guy on television at getting it right.
Bill Stewart is a lifelong storm tracker and offers leading weather instruments at the Weather Station eStore.
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