General

Home Weather Stations

If you want to know how the weather is like all the time, the best options would be a virtual or sensor free weather station. You can choose either a standalone station, which gets signals, or a program that is PC based. If the readings are taken in your house’s vicinity, they can both be accurate.

If you have instruments of your own, you will get the best readings for your area. Still, a kid or a pet can mess with that outdoor equipment. They can also be influenced by the elements and time. If you don’t know enough about mechanics, you might have a problem setting up the sensors and the station.
Since sites exist that will have connections with local stations, there are more opportunities than before for weather fans. All you have to do is visit a site like WeatherBug or Weather Underground. You can see what conditions are in any region and you can even see historical data. You can get most information for free but there are also premium options.

Since they can tap in MSN Direct type services, stations that are standalone can give you what conditions exist right now without even having any extra sensors installed. A lot of stations are getting data from instruments that are kept by this service. Their readings are refreshed every couple of minutes and they give information on what the chances or rain are, wind, rain, humidity and temperature. This network will also carry warnings from NWS.

The closeness to the placement of the receiving instruments is very important for home options, as far as the quality of options is concerned. If you have the luck of a service with instruments maintained in your vicinity, you don’t really need a home station, as the readings will be identical. However, if those services have their instruments in places that are too far away from your location, they might say that the conditions are different than they really are.

Cold Fronts

If you ask a specialist what a cold front is, you will probably get answers that are quite technical. There are simpler ways to explain what it is. Simply explained, it’s the part from the front of an air mass, which is cooler than the air found in its front. Since the mass of air is cool, the warmer air will be pushed and displaced.

The displacement phenomenon appears because the cold air can’t mix with the warm air, which is less dense. That’s why the cold air ends up pushing the warm air, and clouds form because of it. Such a cold front can sometimes be hundreds of kilometers long and often enough they come together with lower pressure.

If you want to understand what fronts are, you should learn about precipitations and temperature. In many cases, there is warm temperature before the passing of a colder front. As the front passes, there will be a drop in temperature and that take less than an hour sometimes. There is more of a gradual cooling as the front departs. During winter and autumn, these cold fronts can drop the air temperature a lot and they can last for weeks.

Precipitation can come together with changes in temperature. With enough moisture, there is the possibility of some showers before a front passes. These showers can become thunderstorms and later flooding. With bad storms flooding can appear as well. Also, even after cold fronts pass, they can still leave some light showers behind, if the clouds haven’t cleared yet.

Bad weather conditions aren’t always the end result of cold fronts though. Sometimes, if the cold fronts are only mildly so, you might not see temperature changes that are significant. If the moisture is insufficient, there might not be any showers or rains. Winter is usually when they are missing.

About

HMS Weather was founded in 2001 by a pair of avid weather enthusiasts, Tom and Jeannette Hathcomb. They have travelled all over the globe seeking new and interesting weather phenomenea. Take a look around and if you like what we have brought back from our various adventures, drop us a line and say hello.

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