My thrusty old Davis weather station has been running now for lots of years. The anemometer is 12 years old. But some time ago the station lost the windspeed readings.
Today I climbed the roof and took the anemometer down. I then got the reed PCB out from the sensor because I thought I had to exchange the reed switch. I have found the problem.
At one end the solder joint at the reed switch is gone and there’s no more a conductive track on the PCB to the resistor. The track is completely gone and the PCB of course measures open all the time. The reed switch seems stuck on open.
Some time ago we had a thunderstorm with one lightning right above us, or at least very close. Can a lightning do this kind of thing? The wind direction potentiometer is still running fine.
A few years ago I had a cloud to ground strike about 125’ from our house, into the side of a hill covered with trees. How it avoided a 100’ grounded (maybe that’s why) tower on the side of my house I will never know.
I had the usual TVs, stereos, computers, UPSs, DirecTV receivers, phone and phone systems go out.
Approx. $5,000 later and a couple months of fiddling and getting replacements, I’m back to normal, but will never forget the noise that made. It did not hit the power to the house, nor any of the other lines coming into the house. And the lights in the house didn’t even flicker.
I managed to solder on a copper wire instead of the now missing PCB track and a new reed switch. It was tricky to get those tiny pieces at their right place. The initial tests with the anemometer inside the house are successful. Hopefully it will work also when put back up on the roof.
