Living on or near the water guarantees that your weather will be different than what the National Weather Service reports from the nearest metropolitan airport. In the many places we have lived over the years, the water keeps our temperatures warmer in winter and cooler in summer. It also raises the humidity and dewpoint, increases the wind velocity, and bends the wind along the water’s edge on most days. It’s no wonder that the forecast designed for the suburbs is often less than accurate for liveaboards and coastal residents.
The weather on the local radio, TV, newspaper, or the Internet has the advantage of giving us a large picture of upper-air patterns, satellite images of cloud cover, and radar snapshots of precipitation. But if we are interested in knowing how the passage of those larger patterns will affect our immediate environment, the weather gurus can only be considered as one part of an accurate forecast. For precise data, we need to have our own weather monitoring gear. In the past, relatively sophisticated weather-gathering equipment was prohibitively expensive.
The Davis Weather Monitor II has brought the price of a monitoring station within most sailors’ budgets. The Davis engineers designed a great measure of flexibility into the Weather Monitor II, making the LCD display console reversible for mounting on a bulkhead, or for standing on a desk or shelf. It can be operated on batteries or wired directly into any 12-volt system. And with the addition of the optional WeatherLink computer module, the data of the Monitor can be captured for storage, graphing, and later retrieval on either a PC or Mac.
The standard Weather Monitor II offers time, outside temperature, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and trend, and inside humidity. The data can be displayed in US or metric units, and high and low alarms may be set by users to warn of rapidly developing trends. Wind speed can be measured in four modes, and some functions can be calibrated for increased accuracy when conditions are outside of normal parameters. The wind direction is shown continuously as a compass rose on the backlit LCD display.
At about $250, the Weather Monitor II is a fairly complete unit for the boat, but for a home or office installation, Davis offers an amazing number of bells and whistles as add-on features: a rain collector for both daily and accumulated rainfall, an external temperature and humidity sensor that will convert to dewpoint, the WeatherLink computer program mentioned earlier, a remote display for a repeater location, shelter and wiring systems, extra cables, grounding kit, and surge protection. If this isn’t enough, the whole kit can be ordered in a wireless setup so that no cables need to be run from the sensors to the display head which can be located up to 400 feet away.
For the ultimate in weather information, Davis offers a WeatherTalker option to the computer option (options on options are confusing, aren’t they?). WeatherTalker allows you to call your PC by telephone and receive all the current weather information by voice. In one of those minor technological miracles that blow me away, the WeatherTalker can even be programmed to call you at a remote location if certain conditions are reached or alarms go off. Wouldn’t you just love to have your cell phone go off in the middle of a business meeting and be able to say, "Sorry, I have to leave—my boat is on the phone and she’s having an emergency."
Normally I’m not a big fan of base systems with loads of options, but in this case it makes sense. For the sailor wanting only the basic information, a few hundred dollars provide the information wanted. True weather freaks can add all the extras either in the beginning or as they find the additional information useful. However it is approached, the Davis Weather Monitor II makes a gift that will be viewed and appreciated at least twice a day.
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