Monitoring the Weather

Dogs Run Farm is now an official weather station on Wunderground for Dryfork, WV. I installed an Acu-Rite model 1055 weather station, powered up the Internet bridge that came with it, hooked the bridge into the router, and violá! Data from our weather station was available on the Internet via the Acu-Link website and iPhone application.

I set-up an account on Wunderground, put in the data for the weather station including map coordinates, provided a few other details, and named the weather station Dogs Run Farm. This morning when I looked at the weather for Dryfork, WV (26263) on wunderground.com, the Dogs Run Farm weather station was at the top of the list, providing temperature, wind, barometric pressure, rainfall, and humidity. That's our station: KWDRYFO3.

I’ve wanted to do this for years so that I can monitor wind, temperature, and rainfall remotely. It was an absolute breeze to set-up, and it worked the first time without any fiddling around. In one month, we have gone from waiting five minutes for the Dryfork weather to load on our iPhones while standing in front of the one window in the house where we got cell service to being a weather station on Wunderground and having access to weather data anywhere.

UPDATE 5/7/13

Rain has been falling overnight, and I've been able to monitor amounts of rain and the rate in real time. This is what it looks like on acu-link.com:

Each of the parameters can also be charted for the past day, week, or month, and the high/low readings can be reset to record new records.

Everyone is focused on weather in their daily lives. We all want to know if it's cold, hot, raining, etc. However, being on the property where one spends a great deal of time outside either working or recreating, the weather is critical to what can be done. We pay exceptionally detailed attention to the weather all year, but now that most of the garden is in and plants are growing, rain - either too little or too much - is critical. Three quarters of an inch over the past 12 hours could not be more perfect. It hasn't rained on the property for more than one week, and the soil in the garden is dry.