Some of the weather stations are used by schools to teach students about weather and weather patterns, which can be related to national and global climate, which can be related to bird migration and plant growth, Johnston said.

One group of students using the WeatherHawk is the seventh-grade class at Adele C. Young Intermediate School in Brigham City. Ronald Goodrich uses it in teaching a "technology, life and careers" course.

"Differences in weather can mean the difference between life and death, such as with people fighting forest fires," Goodrich said.

"We try to show the students how important it is and give them a chance to use the program to try to predict weather over a period of time.

The system keeps all the past data. The students can go to last March, a year ago, to get data in order to make predictions about what will happen."

Some students, he said, have even used it to scope out conditions for long trips. "Kids will say, 'We're going to Canada and we're wondering what it's going to be like there.' There is some information available on the Web, but this has really in-depth stuff to help them make predictions. It gives them a chance to make a pretty good guess."

Some homeowners are using WeatherHawk stations, especially to trigger systems that automatically close curtains or window shades based on sunlight entering certain parts of the home — the better to keep carpeting or fabrics from fading.

But Johnston cautioned that the home user usually has a high-end abode. "A $2,000 weather station on top of your house is not what the average person buys," he said.

Some people own second homes and can use the data to automatically close shutters if wind speeds reach a certain level.

"They can use that data to close storm shutters. If someone has a second home down in Boca Raton (in Florida) and a hurricane is coming through, using the weather station, they can say that if the wind speed is 45 or 55 mph, the storm windows close — that sort of thing," Johnston said.

Other WeatherHawk users or potential users are hot-air balloon clubs, model flying clubs, folks fighting forest fires, television weather crews and private airports.

Princeton University is using one at a game preserve in Kenya. An Australian high school is using one to study long-term energy conservation. Another WeatherHawk is at work in Norway.

"It's very portable, so you can put it down somewhere and install it in five minutes somewhere," he said.

Even auto race tracks have found the weather stations useful.

"The air temperature and relative humidity have a lot to do with which tires to use and how they'll corner at those high speeds, so they actually install portable weather stations at trackside because what you're getting is micro-fine data that's right there," Johnston said.