About This Weather Station

Hardware:

• My hardware consists of a Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus 6163 wireless weather station with a 24-hour fan-aspirated radiation shield and solar radiation and UV sensors.
• The computer is an HP 8277c which was brand new in 2007 which and sports an Intel Core/2 duo running at 2.7 GHz, with 4 GB RAM installed. It is running Windows 7.

Software:

• Cumulus v1.94 build 1099
• Saratoga templates
• Virtual VP v. 1.2.3
• PHP Editor 2.22

This site is a template design by CarterLake.org with PHP conversion by Saratoga-Weather.org. Special thanks go to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather for his work on the original Carterlake templates, and his design for the common website PHP management. Special thanks to Mike Challis of Long Beach WA for his wind-rose generator, Theme Switcher and CSS styling help with these templates. Special thanks go to Ken True of Saratoga-Weather.org for the AJAX conditions display, dashboard and integration of the TNET Weather common PHP site design for this site. Template is originally based on Designs by Haran.

My station is currently sending data to the following:

• APRS/CWOP
• WOW (U.K. Met Office)
• NOAA Mesowest
• PWSweather / WeatherForYou
• Weather Underground
• Awekas (European PWS site)

The Davis ISS temp sensor is positioned exactly 5 feet AGL over natural grass. The anemometer is 20 feet AGL on the ridgeline of my house.

The station was first activated around November 2007. I decided to put my data online for the New Year 2010. My first site was built around the Hamweather software suite. On 6/21/13 I took down the old site and rebuilt it around the Carterlake/Saratoga templates.

After about ten years in the Arizona sun the Solar panel on my original Davis station developed cracks, and the panel cover it was attached to warped and began to crumble. On a very rainy night in August, 2018 I began getting very erroneous readings from the rain sensor (it was adding over an inch every 30 seconds) and found that the warped cover was allowing rain to enter and short the contacts. End result was my new Davis station, which I installed on August 17, 2018.

My interest in weather stems from the fact that both my father and mother worked for many years for the National Weather Service (AKA "U.S. Weather Bureau", in the olden days), my mother for about seven years and my father for thiry-five. My mom continued on as a citizen observer for about twenty-five years after leaving the Weather Bureau. She also sent weekly rainfall reports to the Maricopa County Flood Control District for many years. My dad was a meteorologist at the USWB for about half his career, and then became an area electronics supervisor, Southwest region, for the National Weather Service.