I have always had an interest in the weather.  Not only is it an an English person's obsession but my father was a keen amateur gardener and was always looking at the weather to decide how well his crops would grow.  There are also some links between the weather and radio propagation; a falling barometer can be a predictor of Sporadic E propagation on the low VHF bands.  It is also very useful to have localised weather forecasts for working out when it is likely to be safe to plant out tender plants into the garden and the allotment - one of my other pass-times.

I operate a small weather station from my back garden using a Davis Vantage Pro system.  This system is now a little outdated and Davis have replaced it with the Vantage Pro 2, although mine is still going strong after many years service.  In ten years or so I have had to make just two repairs: one to the cable where a mouse decided it would make a nice meal; and I had to replace the reed switch that is used to measure rainfall as it decided not to work anymore.  The sensor unit, that is out in the back garden, is identical to the picture on the right except that I do not have the sensors for sunshine or UV.  Davis supply two versions - a wired and a wireless version.  I use a wired version as when I bought mine the wireless version was horrendously expensive.  As I have an underground pipe that takes all the cables to my radio station aerials I use the same pipe for the weather station cable.

The Vantage Pro system includes an indoor console that runs off a small 12 volt supply.  The console provides a display of all the key indoor and outdoor measures.  A series of buttons allow one to select a variety of different displays, plus there is a constantly updated forecast.

The console can include an optional data logger that will store all the data from the weather sensors for subsequent uploading to a PC.  The data logger has quite a substantial memory and can easily cope with storing data if one is away on holiday for three weeks or so.  The data logger connects to the PC via one of the COM (serial) ports.

There is an abundance of software available for the analysis and presentation of the weather data.  I use two pieces of software: Davis WeatherLink and Weather Display by Brian Hamilton.  As I run both pieces of software simultaineously - and COM ports will only allow one piece of software to connect to them at a  time - I also use Virtual VP by SoftWx which provides a method of effectively sharing a COM port by creating virtual COM ports to which the software connects.

Both WeatherLink and Weather Display provide very graphical representations of both current and historical weather.  Examples of these are shown below.

Weather Summary - brief summary of current weather conditions - updated every 15 minutes

Weather Overview - more detailed summary of current weather conditons - updated every 15 minutes

Live Weather - Graphical presentations of Stony Stratford weather - Live!

Weather history - Stony Stratford weather over the past year

This weather site is for interest only.  You should never make any decisions using the information on these web pages.  My weather station is an amateur station and the accuracy and the siting of the sensors does not compare to those of professional meteorologists.  These weather pages are ONLY updated when my PC is on - check the date and time of the last upload.  I cannot accept any responsibility for any actions taken as a result of using information on this site. Anyone using the information on this site does so at their own risk.

Links: