Personal/Home Weather Stations

[andeelym]

Anyone have or use-to-have weather stations for predicting weather accurately in your area that you obs? eg Home or nearby obs location.

I am looking at Celestron Deluxe Compact Weather Station cos it has moon phase, rain forecast and also cloud cover detector.

Looks like a good tool for me to determine should I even bother setting up or going out for obs or not.

[stargazer]

Don't know if such system is useful in a small Singapore. Normally if one look at the sky it is overcast, I won't bother to setup. Direct go to sleep liao

Unless it can forecast weather few hours away, then maybe it is useful (e.g. wake up at 4 am to obs)

[Clifford60]

For Sg, an equatorial country and a small island, it is like every day can rain, so prediction doesn't work. Bottom line, see clear sky go ob (if you have the energy), no clear sky sleep.

[kingkong]

get a simple barometer and learn to use it to predict weather i.e. high - good weather, low - rain. or you might want to consider buying a wrist watch with barometer/weather meter e.g. from suunto http://www.suunto.com/gb/en/products?sh ... filter=442
it'll be like a portable weather station. when at obs site, if the watch starts beeping away because of a certain drop in air pressure - better start packing your gears...

[Canopus Lim]

I don't use such weather stations, however, I constantly monitor the satellite images around our regions.

http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/48698.html

Wunderground has quite a high frequency of updates.. in few minutes interval and I found it one of the most reliable source of weather information. As long there are no clouds, the area above Singapore/ Malaysia will confirmed be likely clear.

However, since the weather fluctuates quite a lot in Singapore and Malaysia, one needs some experience to guess if the next day will be clear, semi clear or overcast. Based on experience, usually Singapore will rain continuously for a few days to few weeks, and then there will be a break of about a day to a week. If the rain has been real big for weeks, the break will tend to be longer. Also the raining patterns tend to be afternoon or evening and will persist for days. One will notice that if the rain pattern shifts from evening to afternoon, the probability of clear skies will be better and many times there will be clear skies at night for such a heavy downpour in the afternoon. It is best to go out observing during this 'break' or 'window of opportunity'.

So far basing on this, I have succeeded in going Malaysia (or another country in the middle east) with at least 2h clear sky based on such information and guestimation.. In the past, based on some Singastro recommendations to just 'try my luck'.. I had a very bad record of bad skies (I think only 50 to 60 percent of 'ok' skies and the rest overcast).. but after I use some 'intelligence' and calculating the probability, I got better chance of seeing 'something' during such trips. Lastly, I don't believe in 'luck' in joining such trips. Such 'luck' can be observed through the satellite images; perhaps I received a lot of bad 'luck' in the past.. ha

[andeelym]

Well, the weather stations are not really predicting the rain but detecting barometric changes and hence "predicting" rain for the clueless me to pack up. And more often or so, well before clouds actually come in.

Although the weather stations are not very expensive, just want to solicit feedback on its usefulness before taking the plunge.

Thank you for all your feedback esp the link to the Sunnto watches.

[Tachyon]

Look at it this way - even the pros with their million dollar equipment could not give us a consistently accurate prediction, what more a consumer product?

[andeelym]

Good point. Noted with thanks.