Tempest Weather Station with Built-in Wind Meter, Rain Gauge, and Accurate Weather Forecasts, Wireless, App and Alexa Enabled

June 2024 This is an update to my several reviews below, spanning the three years I have owned and used a Tempest Weather station. It is probably best to read the earliest (bottom) review first to gain a full view of my experience. Sadly, in late Fall of 2023 my Tempest Weather station began exhibiting several problems, including intermittent power loss, odd (or no) measurements from certain sensors, and general dysfunction which became progressively worse as the seasonal temperatures became lower and the days shorter. Eventually the unit was no longer providing useful information. I ignored the issue for several months as I was busy with other matters. Eventually I contacted Weatherflow support and was astonished at the speed of response and the interest they demonstrated in fixing the problem. First the support agent checked the data my system had been sending and we agreed on an approximate date the dysfunction became near total. She then compared that date to my purchase date, determined that I was still under warranty when it happened, and immediately offered to send a brand new unit at no charge. Wow! The loss of power issue was determined to be most likely a user- caused problem (that's me) and I was asked to pay for a replacement hub, which was more than fair. The new weather station and hub arrived quickly and I installed them back in their mounts. Once the new unit was online and sending regular data streams, Tempest support merged the old stored data records with the new data records being produced by the replacement machine. I now have a fully functioning weather station and cumulative data records going all the way back to the first day of installation of the original device (minus those days when it was no longer capturing data.) So, the less than perfect news is that the original device had a life span of about 2.5 years before it ceased being useful due to malfunction. The great news is that Weatherflow not only stood behind their product, they were incredibly helpful while doing so. I'm leaving my review at 5 stars, and appending this update to reflect events as they have occurred. I want to commend Weatherflow again for producing the best consumer priced weather station I've ever owned, and for standing behind their product when something went wrong. This is a quality company, with quality employees and I strongly endorse their offering. June 2022 This is an update to my review below, which was originally posted in July of 2021. All of the comments I made in the original review below are still true - except - the accuracy of the rain gain has improved greatly over the past year, just as the Tempest folks said it would. The haptic rain guage collects local data, which is then filtered through AI and compared to other nearby weather data collection devices and systems. After midnight each night, the localized data collected by your Tempest is adjusted to reflect the broader dataset collected from other nearby devices and systems. The post-midnight adjusted rain data is remarkably similar to the two analog rain gauges I have near where my Tempest device is located. It took several months for the accuracy to improve (just like tempest said it would.) It is now nearly identical to the analog gauge measurements. To understand how Tempest heuristic AI works, see this page from their website: https://weatherflow.com/tempest-forecasting/ One year in, I still view my Tempest weather station as (by far) the best of the weather systems priced under $400 that I've owned over the bast two decades. Original review below, posted in July 2021: The Tempest Weather System is the most recent of approximately a half dozen consumer priced weather stations that I have owned over the past 20 years. The two issues that are paramount for me are accuracy and durability. The latter issue (durability) is the usual reason for looking into alternatives as 2 - 3 years seems to be about the norm before the earlier systems I've purchased for $400 or less tend to break down. They usually do not fail all at once, but instead start losing selective components one at a time until the overall unit ceases to be useful. Ease of system setup and the ability to remain connected to both the local WI-FI setup as well as the internet are also important. The Tempest was extraordinary simple to setup and was operational within minutes of being taken out of the box. It has never become disconnected from either my mesh WI-FI setup or the internet since going operational, even though the unit is installed above a metal roof at least 20 meters from the closest WI-FI relay point. The unit is unusual looking and operates using non-traditional technology for several of its data captures (as can be read about on the manufacturer's website.) So far the accuracy as compared to several onsite analog devices is very high. The haptic rain gauge sometimes reads more rain than an analog gauge placed within a few feet. The AI based correction that occurs each night is a bit aggressive and often over-corrects so that the final rain tally is lower than what analog gauge is showing, although the ratio of difference is lessening over time, which is what the manufacturer indicates would occur as the heuristic AI does its magic. On balance, I'd put the overall accuracy of the combined measurements reported from the Tempest system as superior to any of the La Crosse, AccuRite, Davis or Ambient systems I have owned. The Tempest app also displays the reported data in the best manner of any of the above (which of course is a personal opinion.) It is impossible to know for now how durable the Tempest system will prove to be as I've only owned it for two months. Like most consumer technology, the price of weather systems has been decreasing for at least a decade. If the Tempest also proves to be durable it will be a significant improvement over its rivals. In my opinion and for my uses, the Tempest Weather system represents the best value currently available for consumer weather systems under $400. I highly recommend it.

The Tempest weather station was very easy to install and works quite well. I did have a few issues when I was going to do the install because I was installing it in a non-standard way. I live in an RV so is mounting it to the trailer and the back using a pole and amount. Two problems I ran into first off mounting it to the bumper like I plan on doing required me to have a support higher up than needed to stand off from the side of the trailer but hold it so that it wouldn't wobble around a lot. Unfortunately I had to have somebody else do that because I wasn't able to install that myself. Second problem that I ran into was the pipe that I was using to install it onto. It says you need a 3/4 inch pipe to install it on however if you go to the hardware store and order a three quarter inch pipe don't get the plumbing pipe get the structural pipe. The plumbing pipes have threads on them and don't fit the connector for the weather station because of threads. What I did instead was go on to Amazon and find a mounting kit for this type of station that allowed me to install it without having to buy a separate pipe for it. The one I got has a bumper mount kit that screws into the bumper or to your wall either one and then has segments on it that can be removed individually or added to if need be you can buy as many segments as you need to get it as high as you need I bought enough to get it high up at 8 ft. Once I got it installed set up on the software was quite easy. My only regret is that it does not interface with things like weather underground. One of the nice things about it however is it does let you capture data from it using the online system. You can capture it into an Excel spreadsheet quite easily and there's instructions on the web on how to do that if you like to keep data on your weather stations progress. Back when I lived in the house I did that with the weather stations I had posted there and I have several years worth of weather data stored up now I can do the same thing with this one as well. As far as accuracy is concerned the only thing that I was cautioned by support staff was that it does need to be permanently mounted someplace because it requires GPS coordinates to give you accurate readings since it does have a learning system for the area. If you're doing RV living like I am if you're traveling a lot might be a bit of an issue but if you're staying in one place for a long period of time that might not be such a big problem it'll just have to relearn the location each time you go to someplace new. Overall I give this thing to five stars because I do like the unit it's quite nice and it actually tolerates moving around by my trailer quite a bit more than a normal weather station probably would!

TL;DR - great unit, packed with much more than others. Price is a little steep with no dedicated monitor but totally worth it considering your personal expectations. I'm a weather geek and have been in the market for a PWS for years. I finally decided on the Tempest based on glowing reviews, ease of setup, and lack of moving parts that would cause problems for a traditional unit with moving anemometer cups and a rain collector/gauge. I live where winters would be a hassle for constantly cleaning the unit to allow it to take accurate information. I can't speak to Alexa or IFTTT integration- I don't have need for those features. I used the in-box key screw mount to secure the station to a horizontal piece of wood about 7' above grass that's far enough from any building or obstruction to sway the readings. My hub is about 50' from the station with no signal losses. I took my sweet time to get everything going, synced and talking plus siting, testing signal strength, orienting and permanently installing the sensor unit. Total time = 1 hour. If I had to do it again, I could do it in 30 minutes. Pros: • Out of the well-designed package, it was very, very easy to set up and get online with the WeatherFlow network of other sensors that help calibrate this to my particular micro-climate. • The data coming from this is incredibly diverse. After our most recent early summer thunderstorm, it sensed lightning from 26 miles away and recorded the strike that happened 5 miles away in real time. "Feels like" and air temps are calculated as well as barometric pressure and atmospheric density. • The station is powered by 4 solar panels that feed an internal rechargeable battery. In my location, we can go an entire week with overcast weather. The lifetime of a single sunny day's charge can last 2 weeks. • With the firmware update (175), the system will suspend power usage to specific components (wind+direction and rain) if it's not expected. They still report, just not as often. This will conserve energy resources. • The Tempest app and website displays current conditions, graphs over time and weather predictions based on it's location. This info is sharable among several devices or family/friends. • It's possible to share your Tempest's data with WUnderground's network, but my system has yet to be recognized on that network. That's WU's issue, not Tempest's nor WeatherFlow's. • I haven't had the need to contact Tech Support but know it's there. The forum site is robust with information and helps point users to correct articles or notes. • The system will send (controllable) alerts to all devices logged in regarding onset of rain or lightning sensing. A good thing for people who deal with outdoors. Cons: • I didn't rate accuracy because it seems too soon for a review on that technology given the AI adjustments on calibrations yet to come, but my readings so far seem accurate to what I expected. I don't have an analog rain meter or anemometer to compare. I will update this review if my system actually learns about its home. • There is no ability to gauge any metric regarding snowfall, but I can measure it manually. • There is no dedicated monitor for this system. Pretty traditional for many other systems, it was one of the things I looked forward to having. Fortunately, I had an old tablet that I've requisitioned to become that monitor. On a single screen, I can see every metric and detail in real time (+/- 5ish seconds depending on the ECO battery) I highly recommend this weather system for fellow weather geeks who don't care that they don't get to see wind cups, clean or empty rain gauges, or scrape ice to get them working again. I expect when snow and ice pick back up next autumn, all I'll have to do is brush it off and make sure the solar panels are clean and visible.

Summary: Bought this for my wife. She was elated. It has turned into a complete bust. Good: No wires and mounts easily. Bad: Rain Data is random (Actual Rain this year from two calibrated manual rain gauges: 49.64" .Tempest Reported: 27.01 inches.) Temperature during the middle of the day is reported 3-4 degrees below the actual air temperature. We haven't checked wind speed or humidity. But at this point it would be a miracle if they are even close. Technical support is non-existent. We supplied the detailed rain data. Emailed and called multiple times for their ("calibration" support) and they never responded even after we were told the support request was elevated to engineering. History: I bought this for my wife for her Birthday present. She is a weather bug as you can tell in that we record our rainfall to the hundredths of an inch. (actually have records spanning two generations for the last 65 years). Being technology people, we have tried many digital weather stations and the maintenance combined with where they end up mounted seems to make them a short term solution for each new iteration that we try. I found the tempest and read the reviews, "wow! no wires, no batteries and , no moving parts. " What more could you want? We quickly found out the rainfall wasn't accurate, and even though on average it was low, it would report high part of the time. I wasn't worried, Tempest's website said that if you gave them detailed rain amounts that they would adjust their 'haptic" "AI" algorithm. We collected data and tried hard to get some response and have finally given up. Well ok., We don't need to really see the rainfall in real time, so we moved on what can we use it for. Temperature sensors are no "brainer" so we assumed the temperature was accurate. But, to see the temperature and the high and low you have to go load an app (occasionally remember your password or reset it ) and then dig down through multiple screens to finally interpolate the graphs to find what the low and high were for the night and day. Who is has time to do that? We found it made the tempest pretty worthless. I ended up writing a android app and re-purposing a samsung table (mounting it to the wall ) to display the current temperature and last nights low and today's high. It is mounted in the kitchen and has the display on all the time. Yes, a $350 weather station and a $200 tablet + development time to write and debug the app for an outside thermometer with low and high recording: That makes no sense, but I was trying to make lemonade from lemons. We do enjoy walking into the kitchen in the morning and being able to see the outside temp and last night's low from across the room, so it was at least something. Then we had our first heat wave. "Are you sure the temperature is right?" "How can it not be. Temperature sensors are cheap and accurate." "It is mounted on the roof in full sunlight" "But I assume that they have air moving around the sensor and it is showing the air temp" "Please check it." I was wrong tempest couldn't even report an accurate temperature. It reads 3 degrees low at 80F. We are not satisfied.

Pros: - Easy to setup. Easy account creation, simple to connect to 2.4G WiFi, hub unit finds and connects to Tempest easily. The distance between my hub and the Tempest is a good 75ft and it has been totally reliable. ***See edit at bottom. - Easy to mount. Will work with standard 1-1/4" OD TV antenna mast pipe. Point magnetic North with a compass app, tighten clamp and walk away. - The Tempest app really seems polished and presents the info in a logical fashion. And since it also has week+ condensed forecast, it's become my go-to daily driver weather app as well. Lots of options for setting units for pressure, temp, wind. Wind from-direction can be Sub-Cardinal (NNW etc) or Degrees (1 deg resolution) which is awesome. - Update Refresh Rate. Stated to be under 3 seconds, very close to 2 seconds IME. Seeing the wind direction and wind gusts update in real time is amazing. - Accuracy. At first when comparing to other stations I thought it might be off a bit, but I've begun to realize that "hyper-local" conditions really can be quite different than a station a mile away. Sometimes humidity or temp is lower, sometimes higher. That's ok, because it really is, and that's the beauty of a PWS. So overall I seen to be getting very accurate readings. - Durability. WeatherFlow says it's made from a Marine-grade plastic, and it really has a solid, professional feel to it. Best part is there's no anemometer or vane to get snapped off from a twig hitting it. And no maintenance for a clogged rain gauge like on other stations. - Start of rain event notification. For home or a remote location this can be very helpful to know when rain is starting. ( Will catch that storm front light rain before the main rain arrives) - No batteries to replace. Solar cells recharge the battery. Extreme northern locations may struggle a bit but I think they have a booster battery option. - No monthly subscription needed. - API for reading values via local network OFF GRID. Amazing. - The Tempest web site shows all the other stations and there are a lot of them. You can also hide your station. - Alexa integration. Scary easy. "Ask WeatherFlow what the humidity is" etc. From FireTV and other. Cons: - Like any all-in-one PWS, there is a compromise for various readings. If you want accurate wind they say get it up 30 ft in the air, but then perhaps the near-ground temp or humidity might not be as accurate ? I favored the higher mounting myself for less obstructed wind readings. A lot of it depends on the surroundings at your location of course. - The rain sensor seems to use a literal microphone to measure rain hitting the top. It's just not very accurate. And if it is really windy it will show heavy rain when there is none. The rain sensor is a fail if you need truly accurate measurement IMO, but for general things like rain start and generalized rain rate and accumulation it's ok. - See edit/update at bottom of this review for a connectivity issue. Hoping it will last a long long time, as it does cost a bit more than some. Still, it's a bargain IMO compared to Davis Vantage Vue and some others. ***Edit/Update: Had a big wind storm and the power got knocked out for 6 hours or so. After the power was restored, the Tempest sensor unit would not connect to the hub. I had to wait till next day when winds died down and take the big mast down, remove unit, and re-pair to the hub. Also, data was supposed to be saved in the Tempest sensor unit for some period of time, but nothing backfilled historically. So, I would have concerns about deploying this remotely where there is no access at all to the sensor unit.

The installation on this was as easy as it gets. I used the optional Tempest mounting pole so I could mount it to my boat dock. The app is clean and provides a good view of the weather. In addition to the tempest app, I've integrated my feed with Myradar and the Weather Underground systems (Tempest support was great in helping). As to the accuracy, I really don't have a good way to gauge it. I have done some comparisons with other stations around the area, and the readings seem reasonable and in the ballpark. While I suspect the wind speeds may be a little low, that could be due to the siting on our lake with a big hill to the south. Regardless, it's good enough for me.

I had been looking to purchase a weather station for quite a while and the Tempest Weather System has completely lived up to my expectations. Setup was quick and simple and the design looks great once installed. The readings for temperature, pressure and rainfall have all been spot on which gives me confidence in the accuracy of the system overall. Pros • Very easy to install and connect to the app • Sleek design that looks professional outdoors • Highly accurate temperature and rainfall data Cons • Wind readings can vary if placement is near buildings or trees Even though my setup is a bit close to a building which slightly affects the wind readings I am still thrilled with how well the system performs. It gives me detailed real time weather information that feels professional and reliable. For anyone who enjoys tracking local weather data this is a smart long term investment that delivers both function and style.

Have used weather stations for years and years. I have spent so much money on weather stations only to get half of what I got with this. First off setting up this weather station is the fastest and easiest by a very long way. It is just almost fool proof and really anyone can set it up and get great results. Next off accuracy well I have it against a Davis and it is looking around the same most of the time it isn’t quite fair as they are not in the same place and it is getting sometimes a little more wind-chill. Rain accuracy, there are a lot of complaints that it isn’t accurate but I have to say so far it seems to be about spot on and I do LOVE that it alerts you when it starts raining. OK here is the one I am still totally amazed about. I live up almost a mountain and the weather actually can be very different here than three miles away. It can be snowing here and nowhere else near There have been days where it has been raining three miles away all day but no rain here dry as anything. So weather prediction one day during this winter was no snow for another week however tempest told me we we’re about to get snow I called bull. It snowed here dropped about four inches and literally down the road about two miles away nothing!! I have finally experienced it’s lightning feature wow what a nice added bonus to having this weather station. I am a bit of a silly fiddler added this tempest to HomeSeer so when it detects lightning it then plays a thunder sound across the Sonos speakers. Of course I forgot I did that and the other day I could have sworn I saw a flash but. Anyway within the next few seconds I heard Sonos playing a loud thunder sound that made me jump out of my skin. I might have to disable that. So overall I think this product is really fantastic I just hope it lasts a long time. Most of my other weather stations when it got time to change the battery never worked well after so this has another added bonus of never having to change the battery. Did they think of everything!!!? Maybe. There are a few negative reviews for this and most of them mention the reason is rain and wind direction. I personally think that if you need to reply on rain reporting then you need a separate rain sensor however this so far has been fairly accurate in comparison to my dying Davis. The wind speed and direction show the same as the Davis so I don’t see any issues there. For the people who had the device fail after a year that isn’t so great and maybe the company should send a new one out after all this really should last at least five years in my opinion. Time will tell.