Weather Station
Sarah and I maintain a small weather station in our backyard. The siting is a bit awkward since we have such limited space and we’re only renting, but the temperature and humidity readings are quite good. They are measured in a shaded area about three feet off the ground, sheltered from direct sunlight by a pine tree with about the same coverage year-round. According to all the siting guides I could find, this was the best place to put the thermometer/hygrometer. I also have an anemometer (wind vane) mounted on the back fence, but windspeed and direction should not be used as any kind of reliable measure of the general trends in the area. There are many weird patterns on the corner of our townhouse unit that cause it to be unreliable.
The system is a LaCrosse weather station. It transmits via radio signal to a receiver in the house, which is connected via serial cable to our main server. That machine sends updates to Weather Underground (mostly) regularly. The system sometimes conks out for days at a time, and I can never really figure out what causes it to go in and out. If you ignore the downtime, then it requires very little maintenance and seems to pick up again eventually on its own. I have a specific voodoo dance I do of rebooting, resetting and clearing caches, but none of that seems to have a very direct effect on the system.
As shown on Weather Underground, this system is located in the Manchester Lakes neighborhood Alexandria, VA (zip 22310).
