Observation history from our home in Janesville, Wisconsin
My son got me a small weather station for Christmas in 2008. It shows indoor and outdoor temperatures along with the current time, and it also displays maximum and minimum temperatures. Since I already measure snowfall here at the house, and I also have a rain gauge, I decided to begin posting temperature and precipitation records on this site.
New AcuRite weather station in service as of 3:45 pm on September 2, 2019 (too late for that day’s high). Temperatures for August 27 through September 2 were taken from Rock County Airport observations.
At first, the sensor was located on the outside north wall of our house, near the front door. Sun exposure to the porch, mainly during mid- to late afternoon, caused false high readings, so I moved the sensor to a north-facing wall on the east side of the house, near the side door, on May 19, 2009. Though the porch would catch sun early in the day, this was normally after the morning low and before the afternoon high; I would reset the maximum index around 1 pm to avoid a false high reading from the morning sun exposure.
A neighboring house to our east served to block early morning sun from reaching the porch and the sensor. That house was torn down on September 24, 2013. I didn’t consider the effect of that demolition on my temperature sensor, but I believe that effect has increased a bit every passing year for some reason. By summer, 2019, I was starting to get consistently hotter high temperatures than expected. Just walking outside near where the sensor was, I could feel that it was hotter than anywhere else in the yard.
On July 28, 2019, at 3:00 pm, I experimentally moved the sensor back to the north wall by the front door. At that hour, the readings in both locations were identical, but soon the reading at the front door was soaring due to sun hitting the front porch. Finally, I got the idea to move it away from the house and porch altogether; later that same day, I relocated it to the north wall of the shed in our back yard. There is only grass in front of the shed, and buildings shade the sensor at all hours except briefly around 6 pm in summer. I watched as dappled sun danced around the sensor, and the temperature rose by just 0.5 °F. We should be good to go.
On July 30, 2019, I noticed that the early morning sun clears the neighboring house briefly, hitting the sensor. Readings were normalized by 9:15 am today and should be okay by 9:30 even at the summer solstice. This should not affect high temperatures which normally occur later in the afternoon and are much higher anyway; I can reset the index around 9:30 am if it’s sunny during summer. On cloudy days, and during other seasons, the sun will miss the sensor altogether.
On April 28, 2025 at 4:45 pm, I moved the weather sensor from the shed in the back yard (where the sun affected it somewhat) to a north-facing wall on the east side of our house, where a new neighboring house blocks the morning sun, and our house blocks it for the afternoon. This changed that day’s high temperature from 86° to 83°.
This new placement didn’t help nearer the summer solstice, as the sun still hit the sensor, as well as the porch, for hours late in the morning; the heat lingered under the porch roof well into the afternoon. On June 17, 2025 at 3:00 pm, I moved the sensor back to the shed; though the sun may strike it for a bit in both morning and evening, the overall effect of the sun seems to be less at the shed than at the house. Soon after moving the sensor, my reading dropped by 2 to 3 degrees, from 91° to alternating between 88° and 89°; the sun was out for all of this time.
I moved the sensor again on May 14, 2026 because the sun was affecting the afternoon high readings. There is a tree with a hole in it that has been there for decades, and it provides a natural shading while allowing air to pass through. I moved the sensor into this hole just before 5 pm.
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