January 22, 2023

New Weather Station

For our Christmas this year, we treated ourselves to a new weather station.


This is a Logia 7-in-1 Wireless Weather Station from Amazon. We've wanted one for awhile and Christmas seemed like a good time to make the purchase. 


It's considerably more sophisticated than the little Acu-Rite unit I've been using. Fortunately, it came with a printed manual! That's rare nowadays and a huge plus. It was very easy to set up.

The Logia has lots of buttons below the LCD display, which offer a lot of choices of information to view. Some of it I don't get the point of, such as, I have no need for a temperature or humidity alarm. And I definitely don't need a smiley or frowny face to tell me it's either too hot, too cold, or comfortable in the house. The forecast icon is said to be 70-75% accurate for the upcoming 12 hours for a 19 to 30 mile radius. We'll see. 

Because the wind and rain gauges are built in, the unit had to be mounted in an open spot.

It's still somewhat surrounded by buildings and trees, but off the carport was the best we could do. One big difference we'll see is in temperature readings. The outdoor sensor for my old unit is on the back porch in the shade. Those are the temps I've used in all of my garden notes posts. The new unit will record highs in the sun, which will mean a big difference in my record keeping. In other words, our summer highs will be a lot hotter on record!

The lows differ as well, but not necessarily because one is more accurate than the other (although that could be a contributing factor). The variances are also due to the location of the thermometer. A thermometer records the temperature of it's exact location. Place ten thermometers around your property and you'll likely get ten different readings at any give time. We see this in a rather dramatic form on bank temperature displays, where the reading is made on an open sunny black-topped parking lot. It displays a bazillion degrees while the weather guy on the radio is reporting something entirely different. 

Generally, a sunny location for an outdoor thermometer is not recommended. In this case, though, shade would also change the wind and rain readings. A really good web article explaining all the things that influence temperature readings can be found at Smart Wise Home. I'm thinking maybe I'll keep the Acu-Rite where it is and record both temps for awhile. 

I'll be keeping my old rain gauge as well, because I've noticed that the two units record different rainfall amounts. The Logia can record rain rate (inches per hour) and doesn't seem to need emptying, so I'm wondering if it calculates rainfall totals by rate and time. That's something to look into.

Price-wise it was about $100. That was enough for me to do some careful comparison shopping before buying, but it's really on the cheap side for this kind of weather station. So far, so good, so I think we bought the right one.

New Weather Station © January 2023

14 comments:

daisy g said...

It'll be interesting to see how it compares to what you were using. Reminds me of the homeschool days when we made our own anemometer! Enjoy!

Jenn Jilks said...

Good luck with that! I like the new technologies.

Leigh said...

Daisy, I guess there's no way to know what "correct" actually is! A homemede anemometer sounds fun!

Jenn, thanks! I like a few of the new technologies, but don't see much point in a lot of them. :)

Cederq said...

Leigh, that is a cool set up! I had one similar but older technology when I lived down in LA and it too was in the sun it recorded a different set of temps and humidity then the older smaller one I had in the car port. Is yours wireless? Both my old units had to run a four wire telephone type wire to each, but strung up through the carport and into the living room wasn't much of a hassle. It sure did have an impact on what had to be done on the farm and if I needed to provide extra shade or straw for the goat houses and check the troughs more often.

Leigh said...

Kevin, it's interesting to hear how you were able to use the data. The sensor unit is wireless (I can't imagine having to run all those wires!) and requires a battery. The display console plugs into a wall outlet. I think getting the temp in the sun is more important than we've been treating it. Dan works too often in the sun but maybe this will help him to stop doing that!

1st Man said...

Awesome can't wait to hear how well it works. We had one about 10 years ago at the house (before we moved to the apt) and it was pretty accurate. That's something I definitely want at the farm. I even have the perfect spot for it. I wouldn't mind one now if it was wifi and I could get the details here in town to know what's going on out there but no wifi out there yet. Will get one when we get out there full-time. Will have to look at this one and keep it on the list. Happy weather watching!

Goatldi said...

I had the La Crosse View my sister gifted me with the Christmas before I moved. It never was set up until I got here. It worked really well until about a year ago. It started refusing to talk to the unit that registered everything and became so difficult that after even getting a replacement for the unit in the house (it was wireless) I just said the heck with it. I just use NOAA ignoring the Weather Channel as it has too much information besides weather on it. I would love another shot at it I will be looking for your reports. The main difference is the La Crosse is had a rain station, a temperature and lastly a wind reading . All were single units that were placed in suggested places and had batteries that sent the recorded info to the "mothership" inside by a window in the kitchen.



Leigh said...

1st Man, thanks! This model is wireless, but some of them will send the data to your cell phone so it can be monitored from farther away. That's the kind that would work for your!

Goatldi, your leaving a comment as yourself! Did you get the glitch worked out?

Your La Crosse has a good idea about placing the sensor units in different places. One the other hand, that's a lot of batteries! And of course, the fancier the technology, the more things that can go wrong with it. And will! I just hope ours lasts for awhile.

Ed said...

I've had a couple over the years but I never get them to last. I think our winters are just too cold (and rainy) to have electronics outside full time. Mostly what I care about is the precipitation as it affects my daily life. Temperature does too but my app on my phone is close enough for what I need it. So with that in mind, a couple years back, I bought a digital rain gauge to put outside, The first winder I removed the batteries over winter but missed a lot of early and late winter precipitation amounts as a result. Since the battery compartment is fairly well sealed and underneath, I left the batteries in this year as an experiment. Thus far it is still working but our winter has been pretty mild this year. I cleared the driveway only for the second time thus far and really didn't need to but had the time and so did it anyway.

Between my journals, my father's and my grandfather's, I have rain records going back to the early 1950's for this area. I have several decades of high low temperatures and daily verbal weather descriptions. It really would be neat to put it in some sort of program that spit out my local weather highlights but would be a lot of work.

Amanda said...

Used to work at a nature center. I had high-low thermometers I'd set out by the parking lot, on the lawn and in the woods the day before we'd have class groups come. They were within 15, 20 feet of each other, but the difference in the temperatures could be 10, 15 degrees. The woods had the lowest temps and smallest ranges. Official weather stations are in the shade to avoid the artificially high readings generated by sun and asphalt.

Leigh said...

Ed, I have the same problem with trail cameras, I can't get one that lasts!

That is fantastic that you have all those weather records! Sounds like a family tradition.

Amanda, isn't it interesting how many variations there can be in such a small area. In permaculture, they talk about microclimate mapping to take advantage of them. I haven't gotten that detailed on our place, but I can see how it would be useful for knowing what to plant.

Anonymous said...

Goatldi aka anonymous lol

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

That looks super cool Leigh! We have a rain gauge, but it would make sense to have a broader sense of the super local weather, the only one I really care about.

Leigh said...

Goatldi, I confess I'm sometimes second guessing anonymous, because a few others use it as well. But your writing style speaks to me, so i usually reckon it's you!

TB, with computers and internet, there are so many weather reporting options out there. Some of the systems I looked at let you get online and sign up at places like Weather Underground to share data. What I find interesting about that is how much variation there is even locally. But for a gardener and grower, the most relevant information is what's going on in one's own back yard.