Have you tried NEWA from Cornell? It let’s you choose a weather station for basic information, but in addition it provides several modeling and forecasting tools handy for orchardists. Unless you live in a microclimate with different weather from your closest station, you can let someone else do to work for you.
Oh, and it is free.
Astute observation… Why buy a weather station if a neighbor already has one 
Weatherflow Tempest stations for instance:
I live in a microclimate running several degrees colder than the closest posted station. My weather station provides in and out temps, barometric pressure, dew point, relative humidity, visual weather prediction. I also wanted one with a max and min audible alarm. I was out and heating my orchard last year when it dipped into the mid 20s
After being disappointed at the cost and cloud-based systems most weather stations use, I ended up just buying a Raspberry Pi Zero W ($10 + shipping) and a temperature sensor from adafruit ($6 + shipping), and it’s basically plug + play with their sample Python code. I set mine to upload the temperature to my own website every minute, but it would be easy enough to save it to a computer on the local network instead.
I’d be happy to share my code if anyone is interested in trying this out themselves. Here’s the sensor chip I use, but they have others that combine temperature and relative humidity on a single chip:
I liked the setup so much that I have two now, one outside and one in the greenhouse. Here’s the dashboard that I created on my website to summarize recent temperatures, but I can also just browse the database or view particular dates:
bumping this since its been several years, what weather stations you all using?
We have one because we are dissatisfied with the online weather records. We have a tempest version and get records specific to one area of our yard. We are in a bit of an unusual area where our property is just over an acre and the neighborhood is all similar seeming more like a rural environment than suburban. Plus everyone has large trees and flood irrigation so we don’t get the same records as our local airports or heat islands.
I have an ambient weather one: WS-2902. I like it. I want to get an extra temp and humidity sensor for my lower orchard area.
It’s been low maintenance. I have had it 3 years, replaced the batteries once, and now I need to calibrate the rain gauge. I had pretty low expectations for it’s lifespan, considering it’s outside 24/7 but it seems to be doing just fine.
I have the ambient weather ws-2000. it works fine for my needs. I got it for 239 on sale
I got some additional sensors so I can track the humidity in my basement, and the temp in my garage in addition to the temp and humidity both inside and outside my home
the temp sensor failed in summer of 2025. I was surprised that went sooner than the wind sensors that seem more flimsy. they had a replacement part but no instructions on installing it. after some fiddling I got it back together. it cost about 30 bucks. sucks it failed after only 2 years.
if you are a data nerd like me and like tracking the weather, it is nice to have. all my data gets backed up on a sd card in the base station, and the station is searchable from the ambient weather website.
I run a Growing Degree Day (GDD) mathematical model of codling moth development to time cover sprays. You can see the graph here. (Scroll to the bottom.) This depends on decent temperature measurements (At least daily min/max are required.) from my backyard, so I use a personal weather station.
A couple of years ago I replaced a USB-connected AcuRite station that had been in use for a long time. I didn’t realize it, but I relied on that old station to backfill readings to catch up after a computer outage. I had to replace the replacement to restore this capability.
I am now using an Ecowitt GW3000 WiFi/Ethernet gateway (includes barometer, indoor temperature, and SD-card storage) with outdoor temperature, wind speed/direction and UV, and rain sensor (four pieces in all). The link is to Walmart, and the price is just the gateway, not the sensors. Often you can find the sensors and a console bundled with the gateway at shop.ecowitt.com. I use Linux drivers from WeeWX.com, so I don’t need the console. Thus, I prefer to order à la carte.
Unfortunately, all the personal weather stations that are commercially available seem to want to “call home” just like all Chinese Internet of Things (IoT) gear does these days. I was able to defeat this tendency by not registering my gateway with Ecowitt and by retrieving readings locally via an Ethernet cable to my router rather than from the cloud.
I use an Ecowitt HP2560 console (it’s basically a GW2000 w/ a display) with 16 moisture sensors to spot check the yard and various plants (usually based on location or pot size), plus additional temp/humidity sensors for garage, attic, crawlspace, etc. Check it multiple times a day with both a web browser and my phone and have alerts setup for when moisture drops <30%. Insanely useful.
Very nice! We use home assistant with combinations of zWave and Zigbee.
