What is a weather picture doing on a Pew group? A while back, I posted about installing a Personal Weather Station (PWS) on our property. We are out in the sticks a bit and I felt the ones semi-close to us were not very accurate.
So I bought and installed one, and also connected it onto our internet so it can feed data to Weather Underground, Ambient Weather, and some other weather sites that accept PWS feeds. This has given me more accurate readings at home, and I hope will lead to more accurate forecasting as well.
(View from my phone app). Shows current wind speed, direction and gust speed.
The unintended side benefit that I didn't realize at the time was it also giving me a 24x7 realtime feed on the wind direction, strength, and gusts. I can read this data from the station console, a web browser, or even right from my phone sitting on the bench next to me when shooting, just as if it were a fancy Kestrel device. Only difference, no setup, no calibration, no holding it up, no tripod needed, etc. Just a glance down at the phone and I have it with updated data every 2 seconds.
It also shows a graph for the days history. Here you can see how there was one short gust at 20mph, but mostly averaging around 2-3 mph with gusts to 5-6 mph.
Wow. I am going to be really spoiled on the backyard range now. I had no idea these were this good. I think every public or private range should have one of these and make available to it's members. I'm pretty good at guesstimating the wind, but this will improve my skills even more, being able to feel the wind, make a guess, look down and get instant feedback. Fantastic!
Here's the view of the console screen that I have on my office desk, may hang it on the wall instead.
This shows everything conveniently at a glance. The phone app is also able to show additional data with scrolling, such as Humidity, Barometric pressure, temperature, Humidity, etc. all things which factor into ballistics calculations.
Here are views from the web browser on a larger screen, in case I want a preview of range conditions.
Initial setup was easy. The ground was frozen, so I screwed it to a sawhorse.
That obviously didn't look very good, and also quickly got out of level with the melting snow, and also was blown over by the wind several times (hence the rocks, lol). Now that the weather finally thawed enough to dig, I put a piece of pvc in the ground and mounted to that. Recommendations are to keep at least several feet away from buildings, trees, etc. for more accurate readings.
This looks a lot better already, and will be a much sturdier mount. Now just a little paint to blend in with the plants.
My device is made by "Ambient Weather", but there are many similar products out there by several makers.
Well, and this one, just because it is a Pew post afterall!
