A Great Family Project: Home Weather Stations

When I was a kid, I just love science. Every science class I took in school was a joy to me, and I relished each and every science project that I was assigned. And one of my favorite projects - one that made a lasting impression on me - was the construction of my very own home weather station. It was made of crude materials, but everything worked just fine, and building it and learning how to use it left me with a life-long interest in Meteorology to this very day.

So, when I turn the pages of my local hobbyist catalog, I am transported to that earlier time, when with a few boards and nails in hand, I constructed a weather station and filled it with equipment that I largely made myself. It was crude, not fancy, but in most cases it worked with a fair degree of accuracy - and I learned so much from my experience that I decided to write this article to share some of my insights with you.

Fix this firmly in mind: you have 2 choices. You can either go outside to take your weather equipment readings, or you can stay inside and get your readings off of an instrument panel. Those are your options. Stay inside or go outdoors.

If you go with the former approach, you will need to make sure that the entire unit of each instrument can be safely located out-of-doors (not all can). You will also need to construct a weather station - a kind of a vented structure - in which you can place all the instruments. Then you will need to go outside daily and take your readings. This is the old-fashioned method, and is still preferred by some.

On the other hand, you can purchase equipment for your home weather station that will let you stay indoors (at least most of the time). Typically, the 'business end' of the equipment will be mounted somewhere outside, and then wires will connect it to the read-out display panel indoors. Some equipment made today is wireless - eliminating the need to run cables or drill holes in your house walls to run it inside.

Basic Metrologic equipment will enable you to record temperatures, rainfall, barometric pressure, wind direction and speed, and humidity. If you wish, you can purchase integrated weather station panels, which will provide you with a set of equipment and a panel which will provide a 'weather dashboard' - very popular with the backyard forecasting set.

As your knowledge grows, and you decide to invest in more advanced equipment, you can purchase such obscure things as a thermo-hygrometer (it measures humidity and temperature, giving you a 'heat index'), or a baro-hygrometer (which measures humidity and barometric pressure). You may not care much at this point, but some weather persons believe that the wireless units do not give as accurate a reading as the hard-wired types (just thought I would mention it).

Make sure that you understand this: most of this stuff is not cheap to buy, so if you are thinking of buying it for the kids at home, you better make sure that they REALLY are interested, or else you may have a weather station worth hundreds of dollars just sitting idle on your back porch. But many families find that a home weather station is a great all-family activity, especially in homes with older teenagers, or perhaps just parents who, like me, never grow tired of discovering something new about this great planet we all live on. Happy forecasting!

About the author: Kelly Gillis has great ideas to help you enjoy your backyard. To learn about solar water fountains and home weather stations visit her site.
Click here to get your own unique version of this article.

Article Source: http://www.wellnessarticlelibrary.com

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated