In December, I set up a weather station from Davis Instruments and placed it in the garden by the barn. There’s some inexplicable fascination in knowing the weather for a very specific location. I find myself paying close attention to weather events as they play out here on Pillow Road.
The weather station collects data and transmits it wirelessly to a console, which is on my desk in my study. The console is connected to a serial port on a PC. A program on the PC collects new data and it also uploads the data to a page on my website — pillowroad.com/weather/current.html. I also upload the data to Weather Underground where the station has the id KCASEBAS10. Now it’s shared with professional weather watchers and other amateurs. I can compare my report to stations just a few miles away.
Tonight, according to a Bay Area radio report, the North Bay was supposed to have 50 mph winds. I checked the local report for Sebastopol on Weather Underground, which said NE winds at 15-20 mph. My station tonight reports the highest wind speed for the day was 7 mph with gusts up to 10 mph. Currently, it’s reporting 1-2 mph from the SE. Another station at a different end of town reports a high wind speed of 14 mph with gusts up to 34 mph. The lesson is a basic one: your wind may vary.
Also, my station is positioned a little too close to the barn and that could affect its readings, especially since the barn is north of the station and tonight the wind is coming from the north.
I took this picture today and you don’t need a weather station to tell you it was a beautiful, clear day. But it still nice to know that the high temperature was 65 at 2:08 pm and the low was 32 degrees just before 6 am. Right now, on Pillow Road, it’s 51.9 degrees and the barometer is rising slowly.
I feel like a radio announcer.
Dale Dougherty 