You're planning a day at the beach or at the nearby national park this weekend. If you take the time and effort needed to put together an entire day for this outing for your family, you want to know what the weather will be for that time. Otherwise, you may wind up with intolerable weather and ruin the entire trip.
The good news is that you can have reliable weather information at your very fingertips by inquiring of the various weather websites online. These websites are professional information sites stationed by trained, educated meteorologists who use a vast array of weather instruments and tools to forecast the weather days in advance. While this form of weather watching is the most popular, most people are not dyed-in-the-wool weather enthusiasts who spend a good portion of their waking hours watching the surrounding weather and trying to guess whether or not it is going to change and to what type of condition.
There are those special "weather bugs" out there and their numbers are increasing every year. The reason for this increased interest in weather watching has a lot to do with the types of weather instruments that are available in this day and age.
Many weather enthusiasts start out with a single component, the thermometer. As they watch it over the years, they become more fascinated with the weather and before long they add another one or two instruments. Usually, those instruments would be a weathervane and/or a rain gauge. While these instruments are great for measuring current weather conditions and even evaluating past conditions, they are not adequate for actually forecasting the coming weather.
One instrument that is able to be used as a weather forecasting instrument is the barometer. Barometers measure the atmospheric pressure in a particular area or region. When that pressure is stable, the weather is probably going to stay around for a while. However, if the barometer reading is either falling sharply or rising, the chances for a change in weather conditions is, more than likely, inevitable in the near future.
People enjoy knowing these things and the art of forecasting becomes a bragging right. Many weather buffs quite enjoy predicting the weather change publicly to their friends and neighbors because it's like winning a bet. The surrounding neighbors often look up to the local neighborhood weather aficionado and will consult him or her before taking on outdoor projects.
The array of weather instruments owned and used by each amateur meteorologist varies and each takes pride in his or her own variety of instruments. Some prefer the older, hand built instruments that they must actually go outside to view while others have a preference for the modern wireless, electronic home weather stations that contain a number of built-in weather instruments.
Old weathervanes, rain gauges, thermometers and anemometers are often used because of their aesthetic beauty. Some weather lovers have both the old instruments and the new weather stations.
Most sophisticated home we ather stations have all the practical instruments in their stations. These instruments include the above mentioned weather tools and some more not-so-usual instruments such as hygrometers, psychrometers and weather maps that are instantly available through the Internet.
Of course highly funded government entities such as NOAA and NASA have unreachably expensive tools like radar but the local weather amateurs enjoy predicting weather that is local and close to changing.
Without the Doppler radars it is often impossible to forecast weather that is further away and specific conditions such as wind shear and the makeup of a storm. The local weather hound can usually tell anyone about the different weather patterns and cloud formations and such and they have an unusually active interest in all things weather but their instruments are limited to less sophisticated instruments that are highly reliable and easily used from the comfort of their dry, warm (or cool) homes .
Whatever the need for the amateur weather enthusiast, all varieties of weather instruments can be found to enhance or balance out a home based weather station.
Some of the more popular home weather stations include the 6152 Davis Vantage Pro2 wireless weather station that includes all current weather conditions including; wind speed anemometer with wind gust, wind direction, outside and inside temperature and humidity, barometric pressure, rainfall, a weather forecast and much more. The cost of such a system runs around $500 - $600 dollars.
There is also a great product in the TE923W Honeywell Wireless Weather Station. Included with the main unit are multiple wireless sensors that measure wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, rainfall, and UV levels, as well as indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity. The sensors are heavy-duty plastic devices that won't rust or fail in extreme temperatures. The self emptying rain gauge includes a level, w hich ensures accurate reporting. This particular model runs in the neighborhood of $275 to $395, depending on where you buy it.
There are a large number of quality wireless home weather stations on the market and some great values can be found on the Internet.
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