Printer-friendly version Reader Comments

DIETER BRADBURY Online Reporter January 4, 2008

The next time a major snowstorm lumbers toward southern Maine, Tod Yankee will pick up all the meteorological details by glancing at a screen in his family room.

But it won’t be a television forecaster who’s giving Yankee the lowdown.

Instead, the data on barometric pressure, wind direction, temperature and humidity will come directly from the backyard of his home on Wolfe Neck Road in Freeport.

Yankee, 45, an airport management consultant, is part of the small but enthusiastic band of weather devotees who build and operate their own private weather stations. Using technology and easy access to the Internet, many are sharing data with the National Weather Service and posting their own micro-climate data online, so family, friends and anyone who’s interested can get extremely local weather conditions.

While the rest of us are grumbling about shoveling, heating oil bills and white-knuckled commutes this winter, weather geeks like Yankee are gleefully monitoring their computers, soaking up the data on high winds, mounting snowfalls and plunging temperatures.

“Storms are always exciting, it’s always interesting to see,” Yankee says.

Hop onto the Web and you’ll find scores of Mainers who are collecting and sharing their own weather data.

One popular site, Weather Underground, lists about 75 personal weather stations in Maine from Kittery Point to Presque Isle. Others are part of the Citizen Weather Observer Program, a partnership involving ham radio operators, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and additional partners.

Guy Cote, an engineer from Westbrook is a program member. His wife bought him a weather station four years ago, and he has it mounted on a 10-foot pole atop a shed in his backyard.

Cote’s station includes instruments that collect data on wind speed and direction, rainfall, temperature, barometric pressure and other parameters. The information is transmitted by wireless signal into his home, where a receiver is wired to his computer.

Software processes the data and posts it to the Web, where Cote has a site that automatically updates every 15 minutes. His data feeds automatically to the National Weather Service in Gray, as well as the Citizen Weather Observer Program site.

“Some people might think it’s odd, but for me it’s a hobby,” Cote says. “Being an engineer, I just like numbers graphs and statistics.”

Peter Fulton is a cop, not an engineer, but he likes weather data, too.

Fulton has a weather station in his yard on Ocean Avenue and donated gear to the Portland Water District for its own weather station. He trolls eBay and other Internet sites constantly, looking for deals on used gear.

“I certainly am the type that goes overboard,” says Fulton, who got his first station in 2000. As one major storm was heading into Maine, Fulton loaded weather instruments into his pickup truck, thinking he would drive into the storm and upload data automatically over his cell phone.

He made the mistake of driving the truck to the police station in Windham and sharing his enthusiasm with his colleagues – who just didn’t understand.

“I took a lot of chiding for that,” he said. Technological advances and high speed Internet connections are fueling the fantasies of weather enthusiasts like Fulton, Cote and Yankee.

Each said they were able to purchase complete sets of weather instruments and software for about $600 to $700, not including their computers, which they already had at home anyway.

The weather stations are automated, so after a few hours of setup time, no work is involved in collecting or transmitting data. But some, like Fulton, enjoy devoting time to grooming their Web sites and monitoring the traffic they get.

Fulton said he sees about 100 visitors to his site on a stormy day, and he tries to post video whenever there’s a storm to boost traffic. While many of his visitors are from the Northeast, others are located all over the globe. On Thursday he had...