Now that it is November, it is time to start thinking about holiday gifts. If you have a weather nerd in your family (husband, daughter, son, wife, or parent), you might consider giving them a home weather station. The New York Times posted a story this week about some stations they recommend. You can find it at https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-home-weather-stations/. These are the stations you buy for really hard-core folks who live and breathe weather and cost $200 or more. But there are other options as well that cost less.
Weather Underground is a network of volunteer observers with their own stations across the country. They have a list of personal weather stations at https://www.wunderground.com/pws/buying-guide. They don’t provide prices because many of these stations can be customized with different sensors, but you should be able to find them online. They also provide advice on how to hook up the station to their national network of observers.
Don’t forget the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), another volunteer network that includes observers from the USA, Mexico, Canada, and the Bahamas (although I think there are few other countries represented too). CoCoRaHS observers take daily measurements of precipitation and report them online at https://www.cocorahs.org/. To be an official observer, you do need to purchase one of their 4-inch diameter gauges to ensure high data quality and mount it at a good site near your home or office, but they have vendors available on their website that will sell you one for less than market price. Look on the lower right side of their home page for links to vendors. I am one of the state coordinators for CoCoRaHS in Georgia, but you can sign up online no matter where you live and they will get you set up to start reporting as soon as you get your station mounted. It takes just a few minutes a day to read your gauge and report it on a computer or by app.
Your weather observations can provide valuable information to the National Weather Service, the Drought Monitor, and other groups that need hyperlocal weather data. Citizen science can be fun and rewarding, too!
