I've been a small closet weather enthusiast. Ask me what the weather's going to accomplish, and I'd offer you a 3-4 day forecast off the most truly effective of my head.

Well that got a bit embarrassing when the current weather proved differently, and I've had to take some good-natured kidding. However, things have changed since I got my own personal wireless weather station! The bottom receiver sits on my desk, and I have access at a glance to a variety of weather data, which will be measured right at my place as opposed to the general weather forecast for the location, and that's improved my forecast hit rate considerably.

A lot of the info is for recording purposes only, and I am particularly thinking about what the max/min temperatures are doing, and the forecast icons offer a good indicator of where the current weather pattern is headed. In addition to temperature, the system also measures barometric pressure and humidity (indoor and out, including max/min).

Since we're in a fairly windy area, it'd also be interesting to see what speed the wind gusts are receiving around, so when I are able to afford it I'd like to obtain a La Crosse professional weather station, which also measures wind direction and wind chill factor, dew point, and rainfall. AcuRite 02081M

The pro weather station can tell the rainfall over 1 hour, 24 hours and total rainfall - equally well all data may be uploaded to a PC so you can review the stats over a period. I remember how my father-in-law painstakingly used to record daily rainfall on the farm into a notebook and then manually calculate weekly, monthly and annual rainfall. I can't imagine where I'd find the time nowadays.

What's also neat about wireless weather stations is that they offer a wide range of alarm settings, which one can set to warn of stormy weather, high winds, critical temperatures etc., but I'll stop dreaming for as soon as - hopefully I could possibly get that pro weather station soon.