Weather station mounts

[Robert Edmonds]

A continuation of sorts from the previous thread. I have a siting conundrum. My property has trees on the west side. So I can either place the weather station along the edge of my property where it will usually get a clean fetch of the wind, but the solar radiation sensor would be blocked by the shade of the trees for half the day, or I can place it toward the middle of my property, but in the wake of the trees. One option would be to get some sort of *really* tall tower, or roof mount, to be above the trees. Is there anything you would recommend, that would not be an absurd amount of money/work? Could mount on my roof, but I know downsides to that... how tall would be good enough though to over come the roof heating/wind flow issues. Anyways, thoughts...

 

[Jeff Duda]

It sounds like your setup is just not ideal, so you're going to have to prioritize which meteorological fields are most important to measure accurately, understanding that prioritizing one field will force a reduced quality in other fields.

 

[Matt Hornoi]

A tall tower would work as you said. Try looking around town and your local classifieds. chances are there are people looking to get rid of old ham radio towers or tv antenna mounts. I have a few ads where I live where people giving them away for free because they don't want to go through the hassle of getting them down themselves.

 

[B. Dean Berry]

Rohn 25G would work for you. As towers go, it is relatively affordable.

 

[Shane Young]

Looks like ASOS anemometers are usually at 27-33 feet (see https://www.weather.gov/media/asos/aum-toc.pdf and https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/6560_20c_ord.pdf), so elevating it a fair bit is actually more comparable than most home weather stations likely are.

Comparing Oklahoma Mesonet sites (such as Mesonet - Meteogram for Spencer), looks like winds can be up as much as 50% greater at 10m compared to 2m (which is about 6 feet, probably the height nearer more home weather stations).

However I also see the difference between the 1.5 meter temperature and the 9 meter temperature can at times be a few degrees Fahrenheit (and 1.5 meters is the standard measurement height)... so if you put it all up the large pole, you'd still have somewhat flawed temperatures (compared to ASOS\AWOS sites). But guess that's true of all the all-in-one home weather stations really.

But also figure that roof mounting may also seriously affect temperature readings (ever been on a roof at the peak of a summer day?)... so either a pole above the treeline, or as far as possible out of the wake, seem the best options?