Learn each source
The ingest engine polls eligible station feeds and learns their update cadence instead of assuming every station behaves identically.
Independent local weather since 2012
A simple harbour idea, rebuilt as a serious local data product.
Poole Harbour Weather exists to answer the question people actually have before leaving home: what is the harbour doing now? Dorset Live Weather supplies the network, processing and archive behind the answer.
Live network proof
The system describes itself with real counts.
These figures come from the ingest engine—not marketing copy. Updated checking….
Validated measurements—rolling 24 hours
Contributing stations—currently live
Approved observations—— quality pass rate
The story
One local weather project, growing since 2012.
Dorset Live Weather started in 2012 as a small, genuinely local project: make the weather around home easier to understand, keep the observations live and give people something more useful than a distant forecast.
That idea has grown into a Dorset-wide network with its own processing engine, public weather services, Android app, cameras and historical archive. Poole Harbour Weather is the harbour-focused part of that network—built for people who want to check the wind, water and recent changes before leaving home.
Built and hosted in Dorset
The project is developed in Dorset, its weather processing runs on Dorset-based infrastructure, and the public readings carry real observation times and health states. It is a hands-on local service, continually improved from real use and feedback.
Powered by local station owners
The network is made possible by people and organisations who install, maintain and share high-quality local weather stations. Their observations are monitored independently, quality-checked and acknowledged through the network while the public Poole view stays simple and useful.
The four-stage method
From station to public reading.
Quality checks reduce obvious sensor mistakes without hiding uncertainty.
Check the physics
Range checks, rapid-change checks, timestamp controls and field consistency catch values such as impossible pressure or implausible temperature jumps.
Use local agreement
When several stations contribute to a pool, field-level agreement can strengthen confidence and isolate outliers without discarding an entire source.
Serve a clear pool
Approved live values and condensed historical intervals are written to a read-only public layer with freshness and source-count metadata.
Degrade honestly
If a source becomes stale, the pool can continue with remaining contributors. If the pool cannot support a live reading, the public state changes rather than presenting old data as current.
Keep the evidence
Approved observations build local history for charts, comparisons, seasonal context and future Dorset-scale analysis.
Trust without overclaiming
What “quality-checked†means.
Automated checks improve a weather network, but they do not certify a reading for aviation, navigation, emergency response or legal evidence. The site therefore publishes useful confidence context while directing safety-critical decisions to appropriate authorities.
Rain is a good example
A tipping-bucket gauge can be disturbed during cleaning. The engine can compare rate, accumulation, change over time and nearby evidence before a reading is treated as trusted public rain. No automated system can identify every fault, so source monitoring and contributor maintenance still matter.
The public API boundary
Browser-facing observations are intentionally public. Secrets do not belong in website JavaScript. The production domain should expose a same-origin, read-only view with rate limits and cache controls, while the ingest and administration APIs remain private and authenticated.
Tides and AIS are separate products
Tidal predictions and live vessel positions have authoritative providers and licence terms. Poole Harbour Weather prepares clean integration points, but it will not scrape or repackage those services without permission.
Data sources & attribution
What powers each part of the page.
Local weather observations
Air temperature, humidity, pressure, rain and wind come from eligible contributor stations in the Dorset Live Weather network. The ingest engine applies timestamp, plausibility, rapid-change, source-health and multi-station agreement checks before a Poole reading is published.
Sea, wave and broad-area tide estimates
Marine estimates are obtained through the Open-Meteo Marine API using marine forecast data from Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). These broad-area model values can help provide context, but coastal resolution is limited and they are not a navigational tide or current service.
Official harbour information
Operational tide information, shipping movements and Notices to Mariners should be checked directly with Poole Harbour Commissioners. A broad Poole Bay current estimate must never be treated as the flow through the narrow Chain Ferry entrance.
Own a weather station?
Help strengthen Poole’s local view.
Dorset Live Weather welcomes well-maintained, accurately sited stations with a proven track record. Contributors can receive attribution and network-health insight.
Discuss contributingMachine-readable data
A live, queryable Poole feed.
The latest published observation is also available as read-only JSON with its observation timestamp, freshness state, contributing-source count and quality metadata.
Open live JSONDorset Live Weather app
The full network experience.
Follow the nearest weather area, receive local alerts, view cameras and history, and compare conditions across Dorset.
Download for Android