Weather Station/Probe Question

[Martin Kucera]

Hey guys,

I've been looking around for different weather stations. I was hoping that somebody could give me an insight on what kind of sensors are usually put into tornado probes or similar units. The thing is, most of the weather stations (that are within a reasonable price range) have sampling rate of about 10 seconds. The one I like is the Davis Vantage Pro 2 that samples every 2.5 secs. I guess my question is this. When a tornado passes over the probe, don't you need a nearly continuous sampling rate to record a correct data since tornadoes move at a good speed.
Is more expensive equipment the anwer here ?

Any suggestions, thoughts ?

Thank you.

 

[Jason Foster]

Davis not good enough.

I wouldn't try to use a Davis for a probe....they or anything in that price range will NOT be strong enough as a probe.

Start with RM Young....and work up from there. That also solves your sampling rate issue.

 

[cedwards]

One of the DIllo-Cams that I made used a Davis anemometer, but that was the only Davis component. I made my own data logger that sampled 6 times every second. I didn't expect the cups to survive the strongest winds though.
Tim Samaris measures the wind with several pressure ports around his probes.

 

[Skip Talbot]

You can make your own weather station. I'm currently working with Phidgets analog sensors: http://www.phidgets.com/ They have USB interfaces to work directly with a laptop and you can read the voltage off the sensor many times a second.

 

[Tyler_Costantini]

RM Young is the way to go for wind.. but its high $..

But if your are going take the time and trouble of putting a probe in i would have good equipment.