Live Garden Valley Weather: Since 2001

November 22, 2009
Live Garden Valley Weather – Since 2001
Gary Zimmerman

This article corrects some errors in a recent article in the Idaho World “Garden Valley Gets Weather Page”. There are many good weather resources available in Boise County and Garden Valley. You can view our live weather data and history at http://z.to/weather.

When we decided to live full-time in Castle Mountain, Garden Valley in 2001, I became more and more curious about the weather. It seemed I was always checking the outside temperature or estimating if a storm was coming in.
That Christmas weather watching officially became a hobby as my wonderful wife, Denise, bought me my first weather station. It was a wonderful Wireless Davis Vantage Pro, and within a couple of days I was online and reporting everything from Temperatures to Rainfall on our very own 24/7 website. Now how cool was that!

Being a geek and a tinkerer, I just had to get the rain bucket heated so that I could measure snow melt, and build a customer fan aspirated shield for the temperature sensor. Within a few weeks we were online reporting melted snow and had better accuracy.

Initially we reported live weather data not only to our own website, but also to WeatherForYou (weatherforyou.com) and Weather Underground (wunderground.com). In about a year we were reporting to NOAA’s national forecasting network via the Citizen Weather Observer program as station C0810. The station data is quality checked and becomes a part of NWA/NOAA forecasts.

In late 2002, we moved to our new house in Mountain Shadows and moved our weather station as well. It was a quick move and we were only offline for a few hours. At its new location we now had a dedicated server with automatic generator backup that was now running Ambient’s Virtual Weather Display, WeatherLink and WeatherDisplay software.

As part of our new weather server, we also setup an online searchable database for all of our weather records dating back to late 2001; and also added snow depth measurements. This is a terrific asset for area residents who can see how current day, month, year weather conditions compare to those of previous years, and check snow conditions. Our snow depth measurements are periodically entered into NOAA’s database as well and help with monitoring snow levels and tracking, among other things, potential drought conditions.

Always improving the station and its reporting, in early 2008 we upgraded the original weather station to a Wireless Davis Vantage Pro2 including solar and UV reporting. It was handy to keep the old station at the ready as a backup incase there ever happen to be any hardware problems. We also revamped our website by embracing more modern web technologies and adding live data updated every 30 seconds!

We now have a wide variety of weather data and links available for every need, and continue to provide additional information and capabilities.

You can always view our weather data online at http://z.to/weather

Of course, I don’t claim to be the only online weather reporting site in the Garden Valley area, and myself have made good use of many other resources. I know there is another individual up the Middle Fork who has been reporting for a couple of years, and of course, we all know that Ron recently became the latest addition.

Two of the resources I have found to be of high value are the Garden Valley Ranger station that has a huge amount of historical data online; and the Garden Valley Post Office that updates weather conditions including snow every day about 5 PM. I believe both of these resources have been online longer than mine, and I am grateful for their data. Data for both are may be viewed by clicking on the links at http://z.to/weather

All told, it is a beautiful location to live, and with such interesting people and weather, a great place to have weather watching as a hobby. If you would like to setup your own station or get one online, I would be happy to help!

Gary and Denise Zimmerman have had a place in the Garden Valley area since 1996