My Backyard Weather Station

As a gardener and weather-geek, I was thrilled to get this weather station as a gift from some very good friends this past Christmas.

I had been dreaming of my very own weather station for some time, but my Libra decision-making skills were on the fritz. Weighing the pros and cons can sometimes slow down my purchases. So, as you might imagine, I was thrilled to get such a wonderful gift.

This professional weather station provides lots of cool features including the ability to monitor weather remotely via a smart phone or personal computer.

True to it's advertising, the Acurite Professional Weather Center came with very good instructions and was very easy to set up.

The Acurite internet bridge connects to my wireless router which enables the transmissions from the outdoor weather station to be sent to the internet.

What really appeals to me about this system is the ability to monitor the weather in my backyard via an iPhone App. The Acurite Acu-Link application is free to download, and as soon as I created an account and completed the online setup, I was off and running.

The outdoor weather station offers five weather sensors in one compact unit. For best results, the weather station needs to be in an open location with no obstructions. The recommended distance from the ground is at least 5 feet. The unit comes with a solar cell which needs to face south to properly orient the wind direction vane. Unless you know exactly which way is south, you'll probably want to use a compass to get this right. 

The station has components to monitor temperature, humidity, wind, rainfall, and atmospheric pressure.

The temperature display has an awesome design. It shows today's high and low temperature as well as changes over the last 12 hour period. If more information is needed, I can look at the records tab to see what's been going on over the last year.

Rainfall and rainfall records are available in a format similar to the temperature. The rainfall collection cup on the outdoor unit automatically empties each 24 hour period, which is very handy.

Wind speed and direction are fun to watch if you like to know the second those cold fronts start blowing in.

Another cool aspect of having your own backyard weather station is the ability to share your information with other weather-geeks. Wunderground offers an application that allows people to register their weather station so others can see it.

The wunderground map allows me to pinpoint weather stations of interest in my neighborhood, the city, or beyond.

Here's the weather station at the Natural Gardener. I've heard this can often be one of the coldest spots in town.

With so much weather information at my fingers tips, I can weather-geek out whenever I want. How fun is that! Thanks Jeanne, Marty and Jen!