UPDATE (6/24/08, 10:30 am CDT): Live data is back up, with the exception of wind and rain data. Those are down for repair. We have re-enabled the WXSIM forecasts and the NWR feed. We have also enabled publishing to other websites on a temporary basis. However, this data is still subject to corruption, so use at your own risk.

Our new Contact page is up, and we are currently working on our new Mobile/WAP site. More details to come soon!

This website was created as a public service for residents of Germantown, Tennessee. This weather station is privately owned and operated, is not affiliated with the City of Germantown, Tennessee or the National Weather Service, and should not be considered an officially recognized station for weather reporting. For more information, visit the Terms of Use page.

Never base important decisions on this or any weather information obtained from the internet.



About Germantown, Tennessee

Germantown is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 37,348 at the 2000 census.

Germantown is best known as a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. Public schools include Germantown Elementary School, Germantown Middle School, Germantown High School, Riverdale School, Farmington Elementary, Dogwood Elementary, Houston Middle School, and Houston High School. The city also is home to some of the highest real estate prices in the area. Bordering Memphis to the east, Germantown is a quiet town of streets lined with mature hardwood trees, and often stately homes. There is practically no industry in Germantown, but the city is home to significant retail and commercial services. In the city center is the Old Town Germantown neighborhood, anchored by a depot (a 1948 reproduction of the 1868 original) and railroad tracks that recall the community's earliest days of development as an outpost along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.

Germantown is proud of its long-running equestrian tradition. Germantown, and areas around it, are dotted with larger horse farms, and smaller barns housing just a few horses. The City hosts many horse shows and competitions annually, most notably the Germantown Charity Horse Show in June which lures equestrians from all over the country. Other major annual events include the Germantown Festival, an arts and crafts fair, in early Fall.

Notables who have lived or grown up in Germantown include Chris Parnell, former member of the cast of Saturday Night Live. Parnell developed his interested in the arts while attending the extensive show business programs at Germantown High School.

Source: Wikipedia



History of This Website

I started working on this website on May 1, 2006, as a small project to work on in my spare time. It was originally hosted at memphisweather.awardspace.com. Slowly, I developed this website into the site it is today. For a detailed look of my development of the site, visit my history page.

I have also worked on several other websites. A few of them that are still active today are my Blogger blog and my Weather Underground blog.



Weather Station Information

At the beginning of 2007, I began to look for a replacement to my former weather station, a LaCrosse WS-2310. The LaCrosse WS-2310 is a great weather station for beginners, but I was looking for something more complex that I could control. Soon after I began looking, I found a book by Tim Bitson entitled Weather Toys: Building and Hacking Your Own 1-Wire Weather Station (ISBN: 0-470-04046-7). As I read through this book, I realized that this was the weather station for me. This weather station uses individual components purchased from Hobby-Boards, AAG Electronics, and other providers. The unique feature of this weather station is that there is no pre-packaging - you design, construct, and test whatever sensors you want to have. I slowly built this weather station over the course of six months (even though you could completely build it in a few weekends). I received the final components at the end of June 2007. As a result, detailed weather history from this station is not available.

Here is a detailed list of the parts and sensors I use:

  • DS9490R USB Adapter - to interface the network with the computer
  • Hobby-Boards PI1-R1-A Power Injector - to provide power to the network (uses the AC Adapter available on the website)
  • Hobby-Boards B1-R1-A Barometer - measures atmospheric pressure (located inside the CB-R1-A Barometer Case)
  • Hobby-Boards HT3-R1-A Humidity/Temp - measures humidity and temperature (located inside the CHT-R1-A Humidity/Temp Case with a moisture resistant coating)
  • RainWise RG1-R1-A Rain Gauge with Counter (available from Hobby-Boards) - measures rainfall
  • AAG 1-Wire Wind Instrument version 3 (Hobby-Boards: WIND-R3-A) - measures wind speed, wind direction, and temperature (though temperature is not used at this time)
  • 50' and 14' lengths of Ethernet Cable (Cat5) from Newegg.com
  • 3 RJ45 couplers to connect caples
  • 10' 2" diameter PVC pipe - used to mount wind and rain sensors
  • 10' 1/2" diameter PVC pipe, plumbing flange, and wooden circle - used to mount rain sensor
  • Mounting hardware

Future Projects

As time and money allow, I plan to build some additional sensors that are described in the WeatherToys book and on the companion website. These projects include (in order of priority):

  • Lightning detector
  • Solar sensor
  • Leaf wetness sensor
  • Soil moisture sensor
  • Fan-Aspiriated Stephenson screen for humidity/temp sensor, as described here


NOAA Weather Radio

The NOAA Weather Radio feed used on this site comes from a RadioShack PRO-83 Police Scanner, set to 162.475 mHz. This police scanner has 200 channels, and is great for monitoring local emergency events. This is connected to my computer with a stereo audio cable connected to my sound card's line in jack.


For my personal use, I have a Midland 74-210 Weather Radio. This radio uses SAME encoding for alerting me for my specific county. This radio has served me for over six years without any problem, even though some users have reported problems.



Software Information

The main software used to power this website is Weather-Display. I highly recommend this software if you desire to build your own weather website. It is the only commercial software that supports all 1-Wire devices (that I know of) and has great web publishing features.

I employ the use of many different scripts for displaying various content on this site. I extend my gratitude to the following websites:

This site is hosted on E-Rice.net webservers. I highly recommend this web host for their great value and awesome customer support.

The original web template was designed by Luka Cvrk, Solucija.

Additional software used on this site includes:

  • WXSIM - great local forecasting software (see forecast page)
  • GR2Analyst - the premier radar software! Constructs 3D models of Level 2 data! Well worth the money!
  • HTML-Kit - heavily used to construct the site, great HTML editor
  • FileZilla - great open source FTP client
  • Firefox - best web browser!
  • Oddcast - used to upload NWR stream


Published Data

In addition to data being published to this website, my weather station's data is shared with several prominent weather websites. Weather-Display uploads this data.


Donations

Donations from individuals help to maintain Germantown Weather and are used solely for the purpose of expanding the offerings made available through this website or enhancing the necessary hardware and software required to run the site. While ALL of the information on Germantown Weather remains free to all and will remain free in the future, the number of features on the site is expanding and many hours have gone into making this site what it is today. If you wish to make a donation, please click on the PayPal button below. All transactions are handled by PayPal in a secure manner and you do not have to have a PayPal account to make a donation.

Also, if you would like to donate via check or money order, please contact me at the link at the bottom of the page and I will send you my postal address.

To show my appreciation, donors will be allowed to list their name, business name, website, etc. below the donation button if they so choose. Thanks for supporting my website, whether you make a donation or not!


**Never base important decisions on this or any weather information obtained from the Internet.**