If weather tracking and forecasting is your passion, you probably feel limited by the short-term data storage of most personal weather stations. That’s where having the best and most reliable personal weather station software on your PC comes into play.
With long-term data, you can begin creating your own forecast models, predict local weather patterns, and even provide valuable weather data to the national weather service. You can track shifting weather conditions and track how those changes influence your lifestyle and habits with the best personal weather station software.
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Where Can I Get Free Weather Station Software?
Most weather stations come with software in the box. There are a few stations—most notably the Davis Vantage Pro2 and Davis Vantage Vue—where you’ll need to purchase some type of attachment or dongle to connect it to a software program, but those are few and far between.
There are also third-party software options available if the included software doesn’t meet your needs, which we’ll cover later. While typically these are “shareware,” meaning you can download them for free to try but must pay for a license if you plan to continue to use them, a few options are available at no cost.
Generally, the free weather software options are limited and often lack reliable customer support. We think the included software options will be sufficient for most basic uses, although your specific situation might require a software application that is more robust.
Mac users might run into compatibility issues, as most manufacturers only produce software for the Windows platform and not the macOS. In this case, your only software option may be a third-party application.
Can I Just Use the Weather Underground Instead?
Modern personal weather stations offer internet connectivity, which in turn allows the station to upload data to the internet. A popular destination for sharing weather data over the internet is Weather Underground, which is the world’s largest database of live personal weather stations.
If merely sharing your weather data to the world is your biggest goal, then just uploading it to the service will be sufficient. But Weather Underground has its limitations.
The service is ideal for displaying up-to-the-minute data from your station. However, its historical data options are limited. Because of the sheer amount of data that Weather Underground must process due to the thousands of stations on its network, it only captures data about every 10 minutes.
Additionally, its display options for historical data are limited, so if you are looking for specific weather data (say a graph of a select number of days), you’re restricted in how it is displayed.
It's, for this reason, we instead recommend you install a software package to analyze historical data versus relying on a service like Weather Underground. A software suite gives you much more control over how your data is displayed, as well as giving you the option to store data as frequently or infrequently as you’d like.
Our Weather Station Software Recommendations
What software is the best to use? Here are our recommendations.
WeatherLink
Downloadability: Windows and Mac
If you’re a Davis weather station owner, you don’t have much of a choice other than to purchase the WeatherLink software—regardless of whether you use it or not.
The software itself is bundled with a special dongle that is necessary to connect your Vantage Vue or Vantage Pro2 to your computer. While the software itself is a bit dated, it offers a high degree of customizability on how you can view your data. It also allows you to upload your weather data to the internet, either through Weather Underground or to your own website.
AmbientWeather.net
Downloadability: Web and cloud based
Ambient Weather's cloud based service is one of the most-recently developed personal weather station software options. The interface is intuitive and user-friendly because it is both a cloud and web-based service that will run on any device with a web browser.
It’s compatible with a wide variety of manufacturers either directly or with the addition of the Ambient Weather WeatherBridge.
What catches our eye is the IFTTT support, which allows you to use your weather data to trigger events on your smart devices with Amazon Alexa support which also allows you to ask Alexa for a report on the current conditions or for a report about a specific day, month, or year.
Cumulus
Downloadability: Windows, Mac, or Linux
A free option—as long as you're willing to deal with outdated software—is Sandaysoft's Cumulus. Its interface reminds us a lot of WeatherLink. It’s dated, but incredibly powerful. We'd even argue Cumulus does graphs better.
Sandaysoft says the software should work with Davis stations with the dongle, in addition to some Oregon Scientific, Fine Offset, and La Crosse models. Check their site to confirm your station is compatible.
WeatherSnoop
Downloadability: Mac
WeatherSnoop is the best option for Apple or Mac compatibility. A companion iOS app allows you to also view data from your iPhone and iPad when you’re not at home.
The Lite version is focused solely on getting your weather data online, so we’d recommend the Pro version of the software to get the analytical features that we consider “must haves” when considering weather station software.
WeeWX
Downloadability: Mac or Linux
Feeling a bit daring and adventurous? If you have some tech and computer smarts, WeeWX might be a worthwhile option. It’s completely free and open source and allows you to customize how it outputs data to organize web pages better. It can even upload your data to Weather Underground too.
We do caution however that you must be comfortable with Linux, as it operates off the command line, and doesn’t have a friendly graphical user interface like most Windows apps. But because it’s such a small and nimble program, you can run it on a Raspberry Pi, negating the need to leave your main computer on all of the time.
Weather Display
Downloadability: Windows, Mac, or Linux
One of the leading software packages to get the most from your weather station was first released in the year 2000, and it is still continually upgraded by the developer.
Weather Display includes features such as real time data display, graph history, FTP transfer of the weather data to your own web page, email/text notifications of extreme conditions and data transfer to Weather Underground.
The software is compatible with a wide range of stations from manufacturers including Davis, AcuRite, La Crosse and Oregon Scientific. A lifetime license with free updates will set you back $60.
Final Updates
Whichever software or operating system you choose for your personal weather station, ensure it’s supported for long-term use as you’ll want to access the data you store for years to come. Cloud storage is one of the most effective long-term data storage options available, and you can even export data sets from some weather stations.
