Last summer, we replaced our La Crosse Wireless Weather Station with a new model, this time in living color. Works great and looks good.
Folks in western Canada spend a lot time checking the weather. Cold winters, hot summers and frequently wide shifts in temperature are not uncommon. Having your own weather station is common.
We find that the key to getting good performance is proper placement of the wireless sensor. Typically, a couple of meters above ground and not in direct sunlight or close to a building. Selecting such a location is not easy, especially to avoid direct sunlight both morning and afternoon.
We have settled on hanging the sensor off a lower branch on a tree 25 feet from our house. Our sensor uses 433 MHz so coverage is not a problem.
Our new La Crosse Wireless Weather Station is quite colorful with large letters. Easy to see from a distance and will run off battery or AC. Temperature and humidity accuracy is good. We even find the animated forecast and trends sometimes provides useful information, but no substitute for a proper forecast.
Batteries in the sensor seem to last 6-7 months.
La Cross Wireless Weather Station – Atomic Clock
No, the weather station does not contain an atomic clock. However, you will find that it does contain a very low frequency receiver than tunes in to WWVB in Fort Collins, Colorado. WWVB is the National Institute of Science and Technology time standard station broadcasting on 60 kHz.
Since we are only 1,000 miles away, the small antenna in the weather station does a good job of locking on to the radio time standard, so we get a very accurate clock in addition to the weather.
In case you haven’t heard, proposed budget cuts at NIST may see the elimination of WWV broadcasts in the near future. Too bad for many reasons, especially propagation broadcasts and accurate time. There are probably between 50-70 million clocks using WWVB at the present time.