When you watch TV to get your weather, chances are the TV weatherman will get it right! Afterall, he (or she) gets their information directly from the US Weather Service (USWS) itself and Lord knows, they're never wrong...right? WRONG! I know of dozens of times when the USWS gave a faulty forecast, but guess what? I knew they were wrong as soon as the forecast was broadcast. How?
I've got a home weather station. You know, the kind that's loaded with weather instruments and gadgets that give you weather data? Yea, I've got one and I learned how to use it. I got all my weather lessons right off the Internet and a few short books. The info is easily available and the sites are very interesting to boot.
If you buy a weather station, I suggest you get the wireless kind. You put a battery into the sensors (which are sealed against moisture) once in a while and you just leave them outside in the weather. The sensors take the information that the instruments send them and they, in turn, send the information to the unit in the house, on my computer. I simply click on the application and there's all this great information about the weather right outside my house.
I get the temperature (indoors and outdoors), the humidity, the wind speed, wind direction, the atmospheric pressure and whether it's rising or falling, the relative humidity, any rainfall amounts and a current weather map of my area. So, how did I know that the TV weatherman was wrong? I knew there was a front headed my way simply by comparing the wind direction and speed, the atmospheric reading, which was falling rapidly and watching the weather map of the area west of me.
See, the winds in this month blow primarily from the south. Well, in a matter of minutes, the wind direction changed 180 degrees and the low that was to the north of our area began to move south, with the wind. The barometer told me that the low pressure ridge was approaching quickly and I knew the weather was going to get stormy. The TV guy was saying that we could expect sunny and fair weather the next day. Boy, was he wrong!
We got 2 inches of rain that night but I knew it was coming because of my weather station and the lessons about weather that I'd gotten online. If you want to start forecasting your own local weather and join up with thousands of like-minded "weather nuts" like me, get yourself some weather instruments, preferably, a nice wireless home weather station and join us for the fun. And believe me, it IS fun one upping the TV guys!
Gary Vaughn writes about weather, weather instruments, home weather stations and weather in general at http://slikvee5.wordpress.com/
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