George Loves Weather

Mounting Your Weather Station In The Best Place

So when you're going to be placing your weather station, you're going to have different types of groundwater, trees, rocks, soil conditions, the house where it is to sheds, all kinds lines of things you're going to be dealing with.

So as you deal with that, what you're going to need to do is think about the whole picture that you want to get the best reading from all five of the sensors that you have in the five and one sensor array.

Now the first thing you're going to do is this is an exaggeration, but you obviously don't want to have it around rocks because rocks and soil will generate some extra heat.

Now, there won't be any evaporation, but you can't have it near trees. So this is just a strange example that I wanted to show you started out with just thinking about hardpan.

What we call hardpan is something to stay away from. It will lead to some maybe false readings. Readings that aren't the best for you. Why you say is because you want the best results from your wireless weather station.

Placing a weather station is never an easy thing.

However it is a very important thing in getting the best results from your weather instruments.

Now it's smaller than this but it's still enough that for evaporation like that you don't want to put a weather station down by the pond itself or near the trees where you would want more of an open situation so just something to think about.

Now, a creek running through your yard. This probably isn't going to affect much of anything because probably sometimes in the year it will be dried, dryer, or dried up a little bit.

But in the spring when snow is melting, if you have snow you might have run off, there might be some things in here that might affect your weather station.

I would just say probably try to stay away from things to think about with the weather station that you want to think that the transmission is probably up to 300, 330ft away from your home.

You don't want to have trees or large rocks or anything like that.

Interrupting power lines, electrical sources of power, generator, anything like that.

Probably want to stay away from them as far as being in direct contact between your display inside your home and the sensor array outside.

Now there's another thing. You probably don't have this kind of thing.

This is more like a park. But I just want to show you the kind of soil that could be.

There are some of these on bulb plants that come up like Jonquills or Daffodils, and just hardpan areas under a tree. You don't really want to have your personal wireless weather station in that kind of situation either.

This is probably more like a real situation that you might have.

You might have some rolling grass that maybe you don't cut that often.

That probably won't affect anything too much as long as the grass doesn't get too tall.

Maybe This Is Your Yard, Placing Your Weather Station Tips

So that looks like an area where you maybe could put something that's out in the open a bit that's away from the trees here's some rocks.

But this grass, if you mow it five to six times a year, would be all right to put something in space like this.

Tallgrass, like a spare lot, a vacant lot between homes. Sometimes the grass gets kind of tall.

That, again, could affect the reading on a weather station near it due to the fact that there's a lot of evaporation, especially when it rains.

There's a lot of moisture coming off and there's a bank, an area probably 5 to 10ft above the ground, where there's a lot of evaporation happening.

In the morning this type of lot creates a lot of ground fog as well. So the grass is short grass, but it's hardpan scrub, short grass, medium size grass, or tall grass.

We've covered all the things to be looking for for a difference in evaporation in your yard.

Now here's something this yard looks more like something I've seen.

This is an area that may look like a lot that you own, maybe an area close to your house to take better care of.

Maybe an area where there are trees and stuff you don't mow as often.

We'd want to find something that's like an open area like this that you could put a weather station in because it's not going to be affected by any small buildings around where water is evaporating off roofs after the rain or sun is reflecting off the size of buildings.

Again, you don't want to put it underneath any of these trees.

But an area like here, an open area would be all right where it's shaded at times.

Is Your Yard Like A Forest Floor?

Is it like a forest floor where there's a tall grass with leaves that collect tall grass back here?

That's probably not your situation, but is that a good situation to put a weather station in?

Well, that depends, I guess, on how open that is or how close it is.

Look at the picture here. In a minute was closed.

This is more closed. But then again, these are conifers that grow straight up.

Maybe that's something that you want to think about is I wouldn't put it in this kind of thing. 

A forest floor where there's probably a lot of evaporation, A lot of sun, and a lot of wind that tunnels through here. So you're going to get some kind of inaccurate.

Not that you would want to do that. Just saying these are types of examples of flora and fauna, the ground surfaces that you want to be aware of.

Now, this would be more of a situation.

This again looks like the edge of a very large property or a park. Again, grass-like this where it's just kind of spaced out would be all right to put on.

It wouldn't be too rocky. It wouldn't be too grassy. The grass isn't too tall and it's not near shade trees or buildings.

So that would be an area you can look at as well.

Now, this is probably a more realistic look for some people.

You may have a yard that's harbored in with bushes that are trimmed in paths here and all this.

So where would you want to put a weather station here? 

Well, probably not on the sun side and probably we're still going to get moon exposure.

Maybe like the Eastside for exposure to a sunny morning.

But the South and the Southeast, to the Southwest, would be lesser coverage, and definitely, the Westside shining brightly against something you wouldn't want that exposed a long period of sunshine either.

A Nice Yard, How Would Your Weather Instruments Work Here?

But this is just something again, you might want to look at as far as the situation here. A nice situation, a backyard.

Now, I probably wouldn't place a water station anywhere in this area because of the different types like conifers and shrubs and bushes.

They're all going to cause evaporation and collecting of rain, where things are going to get damper than normal and because it's heavily shaded. There's a lot of moss in these areas.

So that means that it doesn't get a lot of open-air and a lot of ventilation. So I would stay away from this.

Because this could affect a humidity reading.

In this situation we want to place it near this building or the front of the building, or near the shaded areas here.

Maybe an area like here coming down towards the bottom here and maybe an open area where you could place something. Now, this would be a good situation. 

Not exactly this picture, but it looks like this opens up more towards the bottom of the picture.

I wouldn't put it near the water or the trees or these plants because again, plants breathe.

They emit carbon dioxide. And so there's a lot of plants growing here, a lot of plants breathing.

So I would probably stay away from that. Go back towards more of an open area.

The open area might be something like this, except this is Sunfield here, probably a little bit too much.

So I don't know which way the sun is facing, which way this is facing.

But if you want to do a roof for this weather station in this area here, there are no trees or foliage.

You could probably do that. Just remind you, though, if you're going to go off a rooftop, you want to go 10 to 15 feet above the roof because the roof will gather heat from the sunlight.

Same with this area. Depending on how much sun you would know how much sun these areas get.

An open area here, maybe, I don't know, an area a little bit where it's not quite shaded. Maybe this is only shaded an hour a day.

That might work because trees are off to the left here. So that might be something to look at.

I've Been Around This Type Of Lot My Whole Life

This yard looks very familiar to me. This would be like a driveway here and there's an old tool shed down here, some trees, and you've got some rough areas here that you have, some areas that you mow and keep trimmed up.

So you could maybe put something, maybe something in here in the corner, again, depending on the sunlight that it gets, as well as being open so it can collect rain properly too, and also deal with thinking about the wind and where the wind direction is coming from.

Also, look at how much sun you're getting, and the ground cover for evaporation.

I don't see anybody water here. Keep in mind that roads and stone roads do gather more heat.

The roads are lighter, so they reflect more heat, so they're not absorbing the heat, but they're reflecting off.

So the heat, if you were to actually look at the therms coming off from the ground is probably seven, eight-foot off the road coming up.

That is something that would be close in this area, close by to those terms would be affected for the temperature gives you a false rating for the real temperature in your areas.

You Can Place Your Weather Station By Using Our Site Evaluation Worksheet

You can see by reading through this, that I have pointed out many different things you will need to be aware of.

Good luck in placing your weather station on your property. Take your time and you will find out that the work will improve your personal weather station readings.

You get better readings, that you trust, and then your life will improve using weather instrument readings to plan actions in your life on a daily basis.

You may access our site placement worksheet by going here. Get Your Copy FREE Today.