I first set this up a month or so ago, but then goofed up the Internet connection, so it went down as soon as I left for the city last time, but I have a weather monitoring station up at Nippara 277.

Inspired by my friend Ray from California, who spends a fair amount of time in Japan and I hope is moving here soon, I bought a Tempest Weather Station. I’m not going to catch up with his full-on home lab server set up in Shizuoka, but this is kind of fun. And, even a little bit practical. Being way up in the hills in an offshoot of a narrow valley, the general weather forecasts are just never accurate for The Mountain Hut.

If one also wishes to monitor the weather in Okutama, the link is https://tempestwx.com/station/212238.

One of the newfangled things about it compared to older analog weather stations is that the “rain gauge” doesn’t collect any rain. It’s a haptic rain gauge, so it calculates the rainfall based on the impact of drops on the slightly domed top. Nothing to collect or empty, which is good if you’re not around all the time.

Breathless corporate-speak, but I guess I am also helping improve on those inaccurate forecasts by sharing my station’s data. From the Tempest site:

“Tempest data, along with all our useful real-time information, is part of data sets which are shared with the National Weather Service (NWS-NOAA) and other met agencies across the world, supporting their mission of predicting dangerous weather and warning the public of potential risks. As forecasting becomes more difficult and weather patterns increasingly erratic, each Tempest system helps contribute to a better global forecast.”

So, time to sit back and enjoy the fresh air moving at high velocity. I wonder if there are consumer grade seismometers? Maybe just a live webcam would be a better place to go next.