Our weather got a bit boring there for a while. Why even bother to look it up if it you know it’s going to be sunny and 75 degrees?
But with fall almost here, you may want some weather information that comes from somewhere closer than SeaTac. Andrew recently sent us a helpful tip, pointing out that there’s now a Weather Underground station in Madison Valley.
For example, right now it’s 52F, calm, with a cloud ceiling at 800 ft. We got almost an inch of rain yesterday, for a total of 1.39 inches for the month. And the good news is that coming up Friday, we’ll be back to clear skies and 77 degrees.
We’ve also put the overview into a widget on the front page where you can track the forecast while you’re on CDNews.
What, exactly, is it?
It’s a personal weather station, i.e. operated by a citizen. I’m guessing it’s hardware like this: http://www.amazon.com/6162-Wireless-Vantage-Radiation-Sensor
I visit the W-Underground site for forecasts regularly and have always had to rely on the U-District station for micro-local conditions. This new station is great.
Bill – others may have more specifics, but my understanding is that the ‘weather stations’ are locations of equipment that measure current conditions in that particular neighborhood. Those measurements are then reported to Weather Underground and posted on their forecast page for that city. To check it out, go to http://www.wunderground.com, search for Seattle, WA, and scroll down to see all the weather stations and readings.
Wish I had written about the Volunteer Park station I recently added to http://capitolhillseattle.com so I could now write about it disappearing last week never to return. Forced to use this station at Boren/Olive for Cap Hill now: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.as
Perhaps I should sign up for my own station. Wonder what kind of rigorous requirements they have in place for qualification.
with WeatherBug?
Madison Valley Station is a Davis Vantage Pro 2:
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=davis+vantage+pro2
Looks like you could be up and running, and bringing us all GENUINE CD weather reports for about $500: a small price to pay for our undying gratitude.
The zip for us here Madison Valley is 98112, but this weather station you’re linking to is 98122?
Oh wait, here’s info on the location of the station (map on right side of the page):
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.as
That is just up the hill from the Mad-P Patch, so it’s weather from up the north slope of Madison Valley!
(You get that same station by searching on either 98112 or 98122–it’s the closest station to both zips.)