The Gatehouse weatherstation is located in the hamlet of Gatehouse in Tarset, Northumberland, England at:

The original 2010 mounting location of the external weatherstation has been changed once. Due to growth of nearby trees, the weatherstation was relocated from a ground-mounted tripod to a wall-mounted bracket on a gable wall in June 2022. The elevation is unchanged due to ground-level differences. Rainfall measurements are now more accurate than the original location which had some rain shading due to a tree, but wind direction data are probably less reliable due to the closer proximity to two buildings.

Gatehouse Weatherstation's new mounting position since June 2022

The Gatehouse weatherstation provides live weather data for Gatehouse in Tarset, near the popular tourist areas of Kielder Forest, Kielder Water and English Heritage's Black Middens Bastle House. Gatehouse itself is within both the Northumberland National Park, and the Northumberland Dark Sky Park, Europe’s largest area of protected night sky.

Conditions and forecasts

The weatherstation provides a very short-term forecast based on the current conditions and pressure trend. Alternative medium and longer-range forecasts are available for:

Current conditions in Tarset and further afield can also been displayed using the live visualisation tool Ventusky published by InMeteo.

Equipment

The main system components currently are:

From 2017 a manual rain gauge has been used to complement data from the automatic weather station. The device is a 5-inch standard cylindrical rain gauge comprising a funnel with a sharp rim, with a storage bottle inside a storage vessel. Precipitation is determined by measuring the accumulated water in the storage bottle using a specially calibrated translucent plastic measuring cup. Snowfall can also be measured by melting the snow with a known volume of hot water. The manual gauge has been positioned nearby the automatic station. Measurements are being taken weekly, compared with the readings from the automated (tipping bucket) rain gauge, and the stored data records are adjusted if necessary.

Diagram showing how information is sent by WiFi to a Vantage console and the Meteobridge Pro2 wireless data receiver/logger; and data is sent to the web server where it is saved to a database and used to publish information on the Tarset website, on Mastodon and for information published in Tarset Diary

The Davis Vantage Pro II was purchased from Cambridgeshire-based Prodata Weather Systems. Originally when the weather station was set up in 2008, commercial software running on a Windows XP PC was used to communicate with the local weather station data logger, which in turn polled information from the external weather station wirelessly. The internal PC aggregated the information and emailed weather data to the remotely hosted web server every 10 minutes. But the PC was over-powered for these basic requirements and, having to run 24 hours/day, lead to un-necessary energy usage. In May 2015 the personal computer (PC) at Gatehouse Cottage and the web server that publishes the information were completely replaced with a credit-card sized Pi computer from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, running WeeWX software to process information from the Davis data logger connected wirelessly to the Davis Vantage Pro II. In 2023, the Davis data logger and the Raspberry Pi were replaced with a single device, a Meteobridge Pro2, to reduce power usage further, and avoid the need to maintain additional software.

The Meteobridge Pro2 data receiver/logger used at Gatehouse Weatherstation since 2023

Website

The Davis Vantage Pro II weather station began operation in August 2008. Excluding some network outages and sensor faults, it has been collecting weather data continuously. When it was first commissioned there were very few choices available for exporting and republishing the data. All the free and commercial weather display software were rather clunky and poorly designed. Initially weather data was emailed to a web server hosting the Gatehouse Cottage website, where the data were stored in a MySQL database and an XML summary file published. This XML was used by two specially written Adobe Flash applications — the primary weather information display on the Gatehouse Cottage website and a summary weather panel on the Tarset website.

Screenshot of the original 2008 Adobe Flash weather information display, as previously published on the Gatehouse website

When the Tarset website's design was refreshed in March 2015, the home page weather panel was changed to make it compatible with a wider range of user devices, including mobile phones and tablets.

Screenshot of the 2015 weather information panel for the updated Tarset website

In May 2016 the previous Adobe Flash weather display information was replaced this new custom-created HTML5/JavaScript version for better cross-browser and mobile device support, using a responsive mobile-first design. In June 2022, the temperature gauges and charts were updated to take into account the new maximum daily temperature value of 35.4°C recorded on 19 July 2022. Temperature data display was also changed from zero to one decimal place, to reflect increased confidence in the accuracy and precision of the weatherstation's temperature sensor.

Tarset News/Diary

Weather charts and summary data have been provided to the quarterly local newsletter Tarset News since 2008. Until recently, this comprised of a combination of text information and simple charts for daily temperature high/low and rainfall. Since 2016, these have been replaced by quarterly infographics, containing greater information and analysis, and which are reproduced here on this website.

Mastodon

The weathersation has been tweeting since 2010. But since January 2023, the weatherstation toots regularly on Mastodon. Initially this used the @botsin.space server, but now using @[email protected]. Each day this comprises a summary of the previous day's conditions at 05:00hrs, current conditions at 06:00, 12:00, 10:00 and 23:00hrs, with the forecast at 07:00hrs and hourly if it changes.