Its Friday in Augusta Maine!

Good morning from the northwest end of Augusta, Maine. We have a partly sunny morning with today's temps expected to reach the low 70's. Last night's rain is drying up quite nicely.

This morning's readings are:

a relative humidity of 95% with a Dew Point of 56.3ºF.

The temperature is 58.4ºF.

The wind velocity this morning is between 1.3 mph and 3.0 mph out of the West.

The highest gust recorded in the past month remains a boring 23.3 mph. 

our Barometric pressure is 29.58 and rising.

I have been asked where I get my weather data readings from. Like many others, I have my own source of weather data from weather instrumentation that I own and have put up myself.

If you are truly a hard-core do-it-yourself person, there are online instructions on how to build your own anemometer, rain gauge, barometer and thermometer. Any "DIY" web search can get you loads of directions on how to do such things. It helps if you are a handy "gadget type" person.

I am truly old-fashioned, so I went out and bought myself a La Crosse Model 2811 WS wireless weather station and put it up myself.

The purchase price (in my case, I waited to buy until it was on sale) was my only financial outlay. There are many, many different type of weather stations available for purchase, some for amateurs like me, or some for meteorological professionals. 

After I opened the box and read the setup directions, I headed for our garage, a 65 year old farm type with a lot of "stuff" in it, so I really didn't have to purchase anything to do the mounting of the outdoor instrumentation.

Attached is a photograph of how I mounted my wireless rain gauge.

The instrument itself is mounted on a piece of ½ inch scrap wood that has been screwed onto a wooden peg. The peg has been dropped into the end of what is, in fact, a 5 ft. section of broken roof-rake handle, 2 feet of which is buried in the ground. Since this instrument is battery powered, replacing them is a much easier task when mounted this low.

For those of you who reside "in snow country" you will know what a roof rake is. For those of you who live "elsewhere" - when the roof gets a lot of snow on it, it gets very heavy, and if you don't rake it off, your roof can fall in from the weight. I am not the only one who has broken roof rake handles.

 This rain gauge is therefore, mounted almost exactly 3 feet above ground level, a full 3 feet below its recommended height. 

This means two things. First, I have a snow-measurement device that will tell me how deep the snow is until the rain gauge is completely buried under winter's lovely white blanket. Here in Maine, that won't take long after the snow starts to fly.

  Second, I can test the manufacturer's assertion that the rain gauge can take being exposed to winter's fury and survive to provide accurate rain measurement readings in the spring. I wrote to them and asked them this very question, and they assure me that it can be outside all winter long like this and survive.

So, there you are, all you need is a garage with scrap wood, a screw from that old coffee can you've filled with mismatched fasteners and a broken roof rake handle, and you have ready-made mounts for your rain gauge.

This is why it is so very important that you NEVER throw ANYTHING away that has lived in your garage for the past 20 or 30 years. More proof that the maxim known to everyone owning a garage that "you'll need that some day" is true.

Tomorrow: Mounting anemometers.