I think it was 2008 or around that year. I bought my beloved a toy. She doesn't like technology toys. It was a Davis ProII weather station and she just rolled her eyes. She was a skilled biologist and worked outside in the Columbia Gorge and it was a never ending topic of how she might dress for the day. Weather forecasts on in the Cascades are a joke, esp if you are on the east side.
I set it up and mounted the indoor console. She was intent to prove she was better at judging the conditions and only gave it enough attention to prove it worthless. After a few weeks she got quiet about the subject. She started to view the console before dressing for work. After a few months her co-workers were ringing the phone in the morning to ask how they might dress for the day.
We have moved twice since then and still have the unit. It has been sent in once for the factory overhaul which is a set R&R price. It came back looking, functioning and calibrated like a new unit. At that point I added the UV and solar sensors. To this day she still hates technology. But it's now written in stone to record the overnight low and the precip day and year to date) on the calendar first thing in the morning as she gets out of bed - even though I DO have the Weatherlink subscription to the cloud storage. And she'll want the high temp later. She is now an addict to that device to the point of it being more important than her 1st cup of coffee until it gets logged by hand.
Now we are both retired. We live in a remote canyon which is a still in the area but has its own weather pattern. The forecasts are a joke for us and are completely different from the regional forecasts. Our home weather station, with a bit of understanding, is far more accurate than the NWS information in Pendleton, OR, factored for the whole local region. In fact, the public systems reject our contributed data because it does not 'fit'. It's kind of fun, actually, to compare regional weather to what we actually receive.
The ONLY reason to take the time to post this is this: it's kind of fun but very usable. But further we are slowing down and don't do what we used to do. Firewood and livestock are paramount and it's not such a nice-to-know.... its critical.
Get a weather station. Whether you are on a prairie or in your own weather pattern in a contoured area it's a cool thing that is beneficial.
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