A visitor who opens a personal weather site needs a one-screen fact sheet: where the instruments are, how high they sit in ordinary language, and what they measure. That sheet is the public identity of the station. It is not a WMO siting-class worksheet, not a template-unit flag list, and not the compact four-field identity card that a Cumulus host keeps at /info. It is the page a stranger can quote without decoding a dashboard.
The historical TNET Weather URL /weather-info.php was that sheet for a Mesa, Arizona personal station: ownership line, a place description, and coordinates. Recovered captures are historical. They are not a live location claim, not a current equipment list, and not coordinates to republish as TNET’s operating backyard. This article teaches the sheet. TNET Weather does not operate that installation as a showcase.
Historical context
Station sites of the 2000s put “Info” in the same navigation row as gauges because visitors arriving from a mesomap, a forum, or a search result wanted identity without reading a logger dump. The recovered page mixed a responsible limitation (“never base important decisions on internet weather”) with DMS coordinates and a city-border description. The limitation remains good practice. The coordinate block is an example of the kind of field a sheet contains. Hemisphere labels on recovered copy were internally inconsistent; that is a reason to use a reviewable format, not a reason to reprint the figures.
On the Cumulus hostname, /info is a compact card: station ID, location, software, units. Use that card when the question is four stable fields on a software host. Use this page when the question is a visitor-facing sheet on the main station site: place, elevation, and a sensor list a non-specialist can read.
What the sheet must contain
Write the sheet in HTML text. A map thumbnail is optional. A map is not a substitute for the fields.
Place
Give a civil location at the resolution you actually know: city and administrative region, or a named site. “Western Mesa, Arizona, near the Tempe border” is the right kind of phrase: it orients a human. It does not make the station official for Mesa or Tempe.
Coordinates, when you publish them, are the instruments’ coordinates, not the web host’s. Use a named order and hemisphere every time: latitude north or south, longitude east or west, in decimal degrees or in degrees-minutes-seconds, not both in one sentence without labels. Include the geodetic datum if you know it (WGS 84 is the usual GNSS default). If you do not know the datum, say so. Do not copy a geocoder’s rooftop pin if the mast is in the yard.
Timezone belongs here as civil identity: the zone the timestamps on the site use. Details of daylight-saving behavior can live on website configuration; the sheet just names the zone.
Elevation
Elevation is not one number. A visitor sheet should state which elevation it is printing:
- Ground or site elevation near the instruments, in meters or feet, with the unit.
- Barometer elevation, if pressure is reduced to sea level or if the console sits at a different height from the outdoor suite.
- Anemometer height above the local surface, in ordinary language (“roof mast,” “pole in the yard”), with a number if you have one.
WMO observing practice treats height above ground as part of the measurement, not as decoration. The full exposure discussion—obstacle distances, surface type, siting class—belongs on station configuration as scientific metadata. The sheet gives the elevations a visitor will otherwise guess from a photo.
If you do not have a surveyed elevation, say the source of the figure (GNSS, topographic map, municipal LIDAR, estimate) and that it is an estimate. Inventing a precise footmark is worse than a rounded meter with a source.
Sensor list
List measurands, not slogans. A visitor needs to know what can appear on the site:
- outdoor air temperature and relative humidity (and whether the probe is in a naturally ventilated or fan-aspirated shield);
- indoor temperature and humidity, if published, labeled indoor;
- precipitation collector;
- wind speed and direction;
- pressure;
- solar and UV, if present;
- any extra instrument class (lightning detector, soil, leaf wetness) as a separate line.
A commercial family name (for example, a Davis-class integrated suite) may appear as identification of the package, not as a recommendation to buy it. Do not paste a vendor feature list. Do not claim wireless range, “research grade,” or accuracy percentages the manufacturer stated in a brochure unless you are quoting a dated manual as metadata—and even then, the sheet is the wrong place for a calibration essay.
State what is not a sensor: forecast icons, heat index, dewpoint, and software weather notes are derived or external. The sheet can say “the site also prints derived indices; they are not extra thermometers.” The FAQ can explain the indices. The sheet should not let a visitor count dewpoint as a probe.
What the sheet must say about authority
A PWS information sheet is a private observation identity. It is not an NWS station. It is not a substitute for weather.gov watches, warnings, or official climate. One short paragraph is enough:
- the site is independently operated;
- numbers are observations or derived values from the listed instruments and software;
- life-safety decisions use official alerts.
Do not put an email address in a way that implies a forecast desk. Contact belongs on a contact page. The historical sheet’s caution against basing important decisions on internet weather is the right tone if it is attached to the authority paragraph, not buried under a copyright footer.
Length and update rules
The sheet should stay short enough to read on a phone without scrolling past a lecture: roughly the fields above, plus a link to siting metadata and a link to the station section landing. When hardware moves, the sheet changes the same day as the siting record. A fact sheet that still lists a solar sensor after the sensor was removed is a false inventory.
Keep a visible “last updated” date for the sheet. That date is editorial. It is not the latest observation time.
Photographs help if they show exposure honestly: the shield, the mast, the nearest pavement. They do not help if they are decorative sky shots. Do not use official NWS or NOAA logos. Do not imply endorsement.
Distinct neighbors
| URL | Job |
|---|---|
| This page (/weather-info.php) | Visitor fact sheet: place, elevation, sensor list |
| /configuration.php | Siting, exposure, logger chain, how to read the files |
| /weather-config.php | Display units, refresh, template tags |
| Cumulus /info | Compact ID/location/software/units card on the Cumulus host |
| /weather.php | Dashboard information architecture (not identity) |
If two of those pages contain the same coordinate paragraph, one of them will go stale. Canonical coordinates live on the siting record; the sheet quotes them in visitor language and links.
Practical checklist
- Civil place name at known resolution; no implied official-station status.
- Coordinates of the instruments, with hemisphere labels and, if known, datum.
- Timezone name.
- Site elevation, barometer elevation if different, anemometer height in plain language.
- Source of the elevation figure.
- Measurand list with indoor/outdoor labels.
- Derived and forecast products named as not sensors.
- Independent-site and NWS-for-hazards paragraph.
- Link to full siting metadata.
- Last-updated date; change log when a sensor is added or removed.
Modern relevance
Identity is the first quality-control field in any public weather record. Later users join series by place, elevation, and instrument list before they trust a trend. The same requirement appears when research work treats public observations as evidence: know the source, know the location, do not confuse a backyard sheet with a national network history. TNET’s public statement of that discipline is data sources, quality controls, and methodology. How labeled evidence is explained for readers is how the service works.
Related pages: the weather-station hub, website template configuration, and a scientific station FAQ for the usual follow-up questions about units and airport differences.
Sources
- National Weather Service: weather.gov
- World Meteorological Organization, Guide to Instruments and Methods of Observation (WMO-No. 8): library.wmo.int
- WMO IMOP, siting classification
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information: ncei.noaa.gov
- TNET, Weather station hub
- TNET, Data sources, quality controls, and methodology
- TNET, How the service works