Weather Underground

This is the on-line weather service I find most useful and interesting. They have many weather stations and if you search for nearby readings you can learn about your spot. My own orchard was 9 degrees this morning at a time when readings around me were not lower than 14 just a few miles away. My cheap digital thermometer may not be accurate, but if it is, I did not hit the jackpot when I picked this property 25 years ago, clueless of the importance of various locations beyond soil and light exposure.

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I like the site as well @alan. One thing I notice about it is the variability in the PWSs, even ones that are very close. I see variability even in my own yard so I like to look at multiple nearby stations to get an idea of what’s going on in case some of the PWSs are placed in microclimates that are not representative of my own. Observing stations over a period of time, it’s usually clear to see which ones run consistently colder or warmer than others.

The stations are also used for data for getchill.net to calculate chilling hours and is a great tool as well. I have noticed that you have to be careful what stations you choose though because some have gaps in data for the time frame chosen which can throw off the results.

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This is precisely the reason I want to put one of those back yard weather stations up at my house.

What I find particularly useful about WU is the historical data. You can easily look back at monthly calender’s from previous years.

Totally agree. They seem to be the easiest to get to source of that info. Local NWS (like mine) have data going back a few years…but WU has data going back sometimes 50+ years. Very nice!

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I use WU- more relevant to my neighborhood than the NOAA station some miles away in a different part of the valley.

I’m also impressed by the accuracy of their hour-by-hour predictions- not perfect, but pretty good.

I like WU as well, my weather station is signed up on WU.

Patty S.

Low-cost digital thermometers have terrible accuracy and consistency at the low and high end of their range. You almost need 3 or more to get a consensus. Otherwise it is difficult to trust them. I wish I had an old mercury thermometer to compare. Of course, there is the option to pay up for a quality scientific grade digital instrument. Somehow, I think I would still be distrustful at times. :smile:

The problem with WU personal stations is the mounting locations. I see some people mounting them near buildings that can pickup additional heat being radiated from the building. Objects can also distort the wind readings. Some people mount the units where they get sun, other people mount them where they get all day shade. It’s such a mixed bag. Once again, I usually go with a consensus, which doesn’t help much if the readings are near some important threshold.

Was it you Patty that knows the creator of GetChill? I don’t know if he makes updates or changes to the software behind it but I wonder if it would be possible to include a message in the results if the data from the PWS used is incomplete. Sometimes it’s really obvious that the station either didn’t exist during the time period looked at or just has no data because the website returns “0 hours” for all of the values. Other times it’s not completely clear because the numbers just seem extremely low (at least compared to some of the other stations in the area). I’m assuming these really low results are from stations that came online at some point during the measured time period or had a lot of dropped data for whatever reason, but it’s hard to know for sure. I don’t know what the raw data looks like so maybe that’s not possible?

I agree it is a mixed bag. My station is dead in the middle of my backyard orchard, which has a hill to the N, my house to the W, and 60’ cottonwood trees to the E. My back yard is in a bowl. So yeah, it doesn’t really fit the quality of a station of record, but I have it on WU. WU allows me to go back and look at my data since I put the station online. So it is a nice substitute for remembering to write important things down when they happen. Unfortunately the manufacturer does provide a similar service, but dumps your high-res data monthly.

But yes, if someone up on the hill a couple hundred yards away wanted to get a sense of their minimum temperature, then mine would probably be a bad place to look as I’m always around 5 degrees colder than the surrounding stations during clear/calm nights.

Drew, what is the name brand of the unit you are running. I’ve always wanted one. Reading this makes me wish again I had one. I’ve looked at the Davis, pretty hard… as well as a few others.

I’d love to have a Davis Instruments model with a leaf wetness sensor. Alas, my wife and wallet won’t support that sort of purchase.

Instead I have one of the AcuRite 5-in-1 units. There are lots of options there, but I think this is the one I have: https://www.acurite.com/weather-environment-system-900wes.html

I also have the wireless-to-internet bridge which allows you to stream your data online without having the display receiver hooked up to a computer.

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I have 5 Wu stations within 2 miles of my house. Right now they range from 34 deg to 41 degrees. The numbers show no pattern and I have no way of knowing how accurate any of them are. Are they in the sun or mounted to the side of a house? I have a wireless Acurite that I keep in the shade and away from the house. It seems to be accurate to 1 degree. Don’t know which Wu stations I can trust.

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Fortunately it is the lows that occur before the sun is a factor that concern me.

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Right. I was lucky last night the forecast was for 14 at one point but it only went to 21. Hopefully that’s the end and we get normal temperatures.

Looking up past weather info is helpful when trying to understand what had happened then, and Weather Underground gets my salute for that info. On the MORE IMPORTANT info on what is coming soon, I have quite a few freeze-damaged fruit trees that were hit hard by a hard freeze that WU did not predict. Several days prior to this freeze event, WU first put up 28-29 degrees for my zip area. Day by day they kept up the same temp range to expect. The night before the freeze they dropped their prediction to 25 degrees. Well, I spent the whole day harvesting lots of citrus that could possibly get freeze damaged with the now-predicted 25 degrees, which left no time to protect some trees that might not like 25 degrees. Well, the temps bottomed out at 19. Not 28, not 29, not 25. A sarcastic “GEE, THANKS FOR THE WARNING”. To be fair, Accuweather, The Weather Channel, and another online weather service did poor also. Same thing had happened a few years ago with less damage, but the same idea of not calling the temp lows usefully close on a fast blast. Conclusion: If a fast moving blast is enroute, the pro predictors are not so good at getting a good-enough look at the “fastballs” to trust them with a life or death (or damage) situation with valued fruit trees.

Yes, that’s me :slight_smile: Tom Economous. His email is right on the web page, Brad. His site just calculates the data. If the PWS data is incomplete, then that’s on the PWS, not on Tom’s site. Nothing he can do to fix that I don’t think. But, you’re welcome to email him and ask. He’s a nice guy, and very sharp.

Patty S.

Is this more about the state of the science than the merits of the site?

That reminds me, somebody in another thread mentioned they use a good subscription weather service that they don’t subscribe to, because the same weather service has a Facebook page. I wanted to bookmark the link, but I can’t remember which thread it was posted on, or who posted it.

Maybe whoever posted that will see this message and repost the link? They said the subscription weather service was better than the NWS, which is what I look at most.