Robust outdoor data loggers are used in amateur weather observation to record environmental conditions, and are also used to verify readings from other recording equipment.

In a suburban garden near Middlesbrough, amateur weather observer John Goulding is using Tinytag data loggers as an integral part of his monitoring system. His equipment includes temperature and humidity instrumentation located in a large Stevenson screen, and he also records other meteorological elements including rainfall quantity and duration, sunshine, wind direction and speed, barometric pressure, 30 cm earth temperature and grass minimum temperature. Together with manual readings, data from the majority of these instruments is downloaded to a PC for analysis and collation into climatological parameters.

The Stevenson screen contains two Tinytags along with other electronic and manual instrumentation: a Tinytag View 2 TV-4500 logger records temperature and RH, and a Tinytag Plus 2 TGP-4020 with a thermistor probe records temperature. A second TGP-4020 is used to record grass temperatures.

The Tinytags usually log every two minutes, with data downloaded weekly and summarised for monthly submission to the Climatological Observers Link (COL), an organisation that has been publishing monthly reports of the weather for over 40 years. Information is also shared with other weather-interested personnel; apart from summary information, this frequently includes details of notable weather events over a short timescale, for which the Tinytag loggers are ideal - e.g. a sharp change in temperature/humidity at the passage of a cold front; temperature variations at grass level under cloudless conditions; temperature changes during a solar eclipse, etc. Data is also regularly submitted to a commercial weather forecasting organisation for inclusion in their database.

John chose Tinytags after a recommendation from a very experienced member of the COL. He is impressed with their good build quality, calibration which ensures accuracy traceable to a recognised standard, the easy to use Tinytag Explorer software, and the ability to export the data to other packages for analysis. John comments, "It was also important to be able to site the logger or its probe adjacent to my other nearby sensors in order to maintain homogeneity of a longstanding climatological record. With the normal logging interval of two minutes, the memory size adequately allows for downloading weekly."

On behalf of the COL, John is also the custodian of another TGP-4020 which is loaned on request to members to enable them to compare results with their own instrumentation, in order to improve accuracy. A number of observers have themselves purchased Tinytags a result of such use and very positive feedback from existing users.