Hilbert Park Weather (Tunbridge Wells)

Data from this station:

• Live weather station data, updated every 30 seconds (requires Flash)
• Detailed weather graphs, updated every hour (annual graphs at 2am)
• Mobile friendly static page, updated every 30 seconds.
• Wundergound - current and archive data from this station which is a member of the Wunderground network.

Other weather stations in the area:

• Tonbridge
• Bewl Water, Lamberhurst
• Sevenoaks
• Newenden Levels, Cranbrook
• East Farleigh

About the Weather Station

The weather station is a Watson W-8681 Mk II.  It is sited at the foot of my garden, around 50m from Hilbert Park. 

The Watson is a cheap station.  It is made by Fine Offset and is available under the Watson, Fine Offset and Maplin brands.  The main gripe I had with it is that the connectors for the various sensors are regular phone jacks and do not look very waterproof (it is supposed to be IPX3 which is 'rainproof').  I coated all connectors in a generous amount of silicone grease including the battery terminals.  Another lesser problem is that the wind vane is un-damped and can swing around a lot.

Data is downloaded from the base station by Weather Display running on an old Dell C600 laptop under Crunchbang Linux.  Weather Display processes the data, enhances it with extra information, e.g. almanac, and then uploads the data to this website.  The data is then displayed by a flash application, Weather Display Live.  Information is also available in a condensed format suitable for mobile devices.  Detailed graphs are produced on an hourly basis by RRD Weather Graphs.

A note on accuracy: As my garden is very small the house is partially shielding the wind from the Northeast and a large conifer next door is partially shielding the wind from the Southeast so wind speed and direction is not completely accurate.  The supplied Stevenson shield is not 100% effective.  At the moment, at the hottest part of the day in the winter when the sun is shining, the sensor is reading about 1 degree higher than a mercury thermometer in the shade.  Before the summer comes I shall have to make a better Stevenson shield. At night and on cloudy days the readings agree with the mercury.  Pressure readings seem to be in agreement with nearby stations.