Personal weather stations (Ambient & WeatherFlow)

Use your backyard Ambient Weather or WeatherFlow Tempest station for outdoor context, NWS alerts, and forecast freeze risk instead of a distant OpenWeather city.

Outdoor thermometer iced over with frost on the dial and housing
Outdoor air can look fine while a cold corner of the garage is already below threshold. Photo: August Geyler. CC BY-SA 4.0

OpenWeather city IDs are fine for a rough regional forecast. If you already run an Ambient Weather or WeatherFlow Tempest station in the yard, ThermalTrace can read outdoor temp/humidity from your property, and use those coordinates for NWS and forecast freeze alerts.

Dashboard → Settings

  1. Open Dashboard → Settings → Home page display.
  2. Under Outdoor weather source, choose Ambient or WeatherFlow.
  3. Enter your station credentials (see below) and save.
  4. Confirm the home weather card shows your station name.

Ambient Weather

  • MAC address: shown on the Ambient dashboard for your station.
  • API key, from ambientweather.net → Account → API keys (your personal key).
  • Site operator: set AMBIENT_APPLICATION_KEY in Worker secrets (developer application key).

WeatherFlow Tempest

  • Station ID: tempestwx.com → station settings.
  • Personal access token. Settings → Data Authorizations → Create token.
  • Readings use your Tempest outdoor air temperature and humidity.

What updates automatically

Outdoor card on Home, indoor/outdoor delta on History, forecast freeze alerts, NWS freeze advisories, and cold-snap checklist context all use the configured source. OpenWeather remains the fallback if a personal fetch fails.

Also mirror station data via ingest

Prefer pushing every sensor into ThermalTrace history? Use ESPHome/Shelly recipes, the Node-RED MQTT flow, or Home Assistant HACS: separate from the outdoor weather card.

FAQ

Do I still need OpenWeather?
OpenWeather is the default and fallback. Personal stations replace the outdoor card and improve NWS/forecast context at your yard.

Where are my Ambient/WeatherFlow keys stored?
In your account metadata (Dashboard → Settings), same as display preferences, not in the public git repo.