Science At Home: Home Weather Stations

I loved science when I was a kid - still do, as a matter of fact. I loved doing science projects for school, and one of my favorite projects was to construct a homemade weather station. It was mostly made from things you might find around the house: knocked-together wooden planks, milk cartons, nails. But I had a blast making it, and learned a lot from the whole experience. As a result I have always had a fondness for Meteorology - the study of weather patterns.

And so I am very pleased to see that there are home weather stations now being manufactured that incorporate technology that goes far beyond anything that was available when I was young. So I decided to write this article and outline for you some of the devices that you might want to get if you want to set up your own forecast center at home.

There are 2 ways to approach this: You can either construct a shelter and place your weather detection equipment inside it, which will require you to go outside to take readings, or you can set up a home weather station that will allow you to get readings while you are inside.

If you go with the former approach, you will need to make sure that the entire unit of each instrument can be safely located out-of-doors (not all can). You will also need to construct a weather station - a kind of a vented structure - in which you can place all the instruments. Then you will need to go outside daily and take your readings. This is the old-fashioned method, and is still preferred by some.

On the other hand you can purchase equipment for your home weather station that has an indoor and an outdoor component. The indoor component contains the dials and screens and other components that give you the reading - the rest stays outside, connected by a cable (or via a wireless transmission) to your inside display instrumentation.

If you are just getting started, you will want to invest in the following instruments: rainfall indicator, barometric pressure gauge, wind direction and speed indicator, and humidity gauge. Some of these are sold as an integrated weather workstation unit, with an indoor 'dashboard' that will give you your equipment readouts.

As your skill and knowledge grow, you can invest in more advanced instrumentation, such as a thermo-hygrometer (it measures humidity and temperature, giving you a 'heat index'), or a baro-hygrometer (which measures humidity and barometric pressure). Most home weather forecasters find that the wireless equipment is easier to install and maintain, but the downside is that they cost a lot more than the hard-wired equipment. In addition, there are some die-hard fans of the old equipment that feel that the hard-wired models give a more accurate reading, but that is disputed by others.

One final note - this equipment is generally not cheap to buy, so if you are buying it for your kids make sure that they are really interested in the subject and are willing to keep at it. If you think that ther is the chance that they might lose interest, it would be better for them to make their own crude (but fully functional) equipment at first. By the way, having a home weather station is a great family activity - maintaining the equipment as well as taking the daily readings. I wish you happy forecasting!

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About the author: Kelly Gillis has great ideas to help you enjoy your backyard. To learn about backyard landscaping and home weather stations visit her site.