Personal Prognostication
One of the funniest things about the weather room here at CBS News is that it had a big bay window, just to back up the high tech weather forecasting tools. Sadly, that view of the heavens has recently been obscured forever as a huge skyscraper has just gone up next door.
Faced with this problem, we jovially thought about getting our own technology to help us divine the weather. And, in our usual way of finding unusual weather experts, we divided the spoils up among friends and family for their "scientific" reviews. So, Ray the Director, Bob, our producer, and Jim, the producer's father-in-law, helped me try to forecast the weather with new home weather stations. Plus we found some ingenious new watches and websites that can give us a heads up on the weather.
MKIII Weather Station
For $995, this is the big daddy of them all. This roof-mounted, wireless weather station measures wind, rain, humidity, temperature, pressure, wind chill, dewpoint, anything you can think of. It features a PC interface so you can track weather changes from your computer, or by its handsome wood display readout.... it's amazing. This is the ultimate weather gadget for the ultimate weather enthusiast.
Ray, our meteorologically minded director says set-up was a snap, taking no more than half an hour. Toll-free technical support was helpful.
"This would be valuable for a business that depends on current and forecasted weather," he said, "including farming, transportation services and commercial fishing. It can be integrated into a computer web page and more than one receiver can be used with the condition they are placed within four hundred feet of the weather station. This allows any of your neighbors that are geeks to get in on the action and perhaps share the cost of the unit."
He added, "as much as I never purchase extended warranties, I would make an exception with this one. It seems to me that the $150, five-year extended warranty is well worth the price because the unit is obviously going to be exposed to the worst weather conditions."
La Crosse Wireless Wind Station
This unit also features a remote-mounted device and inside interface. Measures winds up to 124 miles per hour (God help you), can also predict weather by patterns in wind, pressure, etc.
Jim, our producer's father-in-law, tested this unit. For the record, Jim is the operations manager for a New Jersey high school, and his wife, Carol, a school bus driver - both very dependent upon the weather forecast. And both found this unit to be wonderful.
"It was very easy to set up," he said. "The instructions are very easy to follow. Allow about a half-hour from opening the box until everything's ready to go"
"I love the display," he added. "The indoor/outdoor temperature gauge, wind direction and speed, rainfall totals, weather forecast icons (determined by air pressure, humidity, etc.), all very easy to read. The display doesn't take up too much room at all, and can be read from a distance."
Jim's one-sentence review - "I'd buy this in a minute."
I hope he has $400 handy.
La Crosse Sun-Moon Weather Station
I tested this baby, which in my opinion is probably the best , most affordable all-in-one device to measure rain, wind, temp, pressure, etc. It costs about $170, and is the company's best seller. Very cool device. I love how you can follow the phases of the moon, sunrise and sunsets, monitor environmental conditions outside and inside the home.
Scientific Sales Lightning Detector
This is a very cool, and probably very necessary thing for golfers and campers to have in their bags. This battery-powered device lets you know about lightning discharges up to 40 miles away. This could be a great, albeit somewhat expensive, gift for the golf enthusiast and camper, because it tells you how far away a storm is. It can also be powered by a cigarette lighter for those who are on the road. This unit costs $195.
Suunto X6HR watch
Oh, imagine having a compass, altimeter, barometer, thermometer, stopwatch, and transmitter to a heart rate monitor on your watch. Take your heart rate measurements and you can play back your entire data on your computer: even share your data with others who own similar devices. This baby also features alarms that can warn of upcoming storms. I love this. Did I mention that it also tells time? $400.
Finally, the Nike's Lance 3 Titanium Ascent Compass watch
That's Lance as in Lance Armstrong. This watch is available as of Dec. 5. We don't even know the price on this one yet. But if you have successfully won four Tour De France competitions as cyclist Lance Armstrong has, you need to know exactly how fast you are going uphill. Armstrong has helped Nike come up with this ultimate lightweight compass, weather station, and training tool disguised as a watch. Very, very cool.
For your computer, there is the Accuweather bug for windows computers, which brings your local forecast, complete with radar picture, right to your desktop. The Weatherbug also puts the power of weather satellites and forecasting equipment right onto your desktop. Equally cool to have floating around waiting for you to click it up.
And of course, one of my favorite sites, Disasterlinks.net. Click here first for all details about any and every kind of disaster and malady to plague the earth. It's run by some very trustworthy, and very familiar people, here at CBS News.
by Dan Dubno