Smart Irrigation Controllers Save Water! Hyper-local (i.e. close to your home) weather stations provide the real-time weather knowledge the smart controllers need to make smart decisions!
The weather stations project is a collaboration between Skidaway Audubon and The Landings Association. Under the auspices of the TLA Strategic Water Committee, a team of volunteers has established a network of weather stations within The Landings that provide a real-time and historical view of weather on Skidaway Island at a number of locations. The goal is to have a high quality weather source within a half mile of every home in the Landings. You will find additional detailed information about this network by using the top menu and clicking on Stations.
Your smart irrigation controller is able to take into account precipitation in the last few days at your location, as well as forecast precipitation for your local area to decide whether to modify or skip a scheduled irrigation session. Here on Skidaway Island we frequently have precipitation events that are highly localized. We even sometimes have an inch of rain at one location and no rain at all in another location not far away. For this reason, it’s important to link your smart irrigation controller to a reliable weather station that is close to your home.
Over the last year or so, we have installed a network of weather stations in places where they should provide reliable reports of precipitation. We set a goal of providing stations that are within a half mile of every residence in The Landings. The map below shows the location of these stations along with their Weather Underground ID that you can access when linking to the station. The circles are a mile in diameter so every home inside a circle is within a half mile of that station. As you can see the coverage isn’t absolutely perfect, and a few areas are more like 3/4 mile from the nearest station.
Please use this interactive map with pan and zoom to find the weather station that is closest to you. (circles in red are active stations, circles in yellow are temporarily out of service)
To use this map, locate your property, then note which weather station you are closest to – e.g. KGASAVAN420. This is the station that you would choose when setting up your smart controller. Also note that you can review weather data from this or any station by using the following url – replace the last three digits with that of the station nearest you. This will bring up a dedicated web page dedicated to that particular station. At the top is current weather conditions, and if you scroll down, you can view historical weather charts, by day, week or month.
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KGASAVAN420
