This website provides up to date weather information and historical records for Thatcham, Berkshire, England.
As of 05Jan10, the recent news page has been replaced by a
account.
The weather pages are updated automatically at 5/10 minute intervals using Virtual Weather Station (VWS) software produced by Ambient Software.
The weather station is a Davis Vantage Pro2+ (model #6163UK). The sensors record wind speed/direction, temperature, humidity, air pressure, rain, solar radiation & UVi along with grass temperature. All other values displayed are calculated by software. The sensors are located in four different locations and connect to the base station by radio link. The base station is connected to a dedicated weather PC via a USB data logger. The data logger ensures no data is lost in the event of a power cut or PC crashing.
The PC runs the VWS software which continuously records and stores the data and generates the graphs, tables and images that are required for the website.
The PC is connected to the web via Plusnet Fibre Broadband.
Cameras record both to local hard drive and remote webspace. The sky is captured every 30 seconds, current weather data is superimposed before transfer to the website. Once an hour, time-lapse videos are produced and uploaded. The gardens are also monitored with any movement recorded as both still images and video, but these are not published.
The station has continuously recorded data since 26 October 2002.
Prior to January 2014, the weather station hardware in use was an Oregon Scientific WMR928NX station. I have owned two of these, but they are no longer in production and various failures meant I could no longer maintain a reliable station, so I upgraded to the Davis system.
