Unfortunately things aren’t as easy as they might seem because barometer repair shops are somewhat rare because of the fact there aren’t many barometer owners and there are even fewer that are willing to pay for such a repair. Another negative aspect of getting to repair a barometer is the fact that it costs a pretty penny and not many are willing to spend that much on an antique mercury barometer.

As a bottom line I consider that repairing a barometer requires qualified skill and shouldn’t be done at home under no circumstances. All in all I think you’re better off getting a new digital barometer when the old one brakes but if you’re fond of it you should try locating the nearest barometer repair specialized shop and let those people tinker with it.

The weather barometer didn’t really have a long life span as the inventors of that time quickly figured out that it wasn’t a very precise tool but it was still a pretty good start. If you really are interested in learning more about the water barometer I suggest visiting Wikipedia and searching there. Although we’ve pretty much got it covered in this article if you’re really keen on learning more about the water barometer and who invented it I suggest reading our article about the Goethe barometer – and if that doesn’t satisfy your curiosity you can always go to Wikipedia.

As a short summary the water based barometer was a simple tool used to forecast the weather in the past and has been for many years considered deprecated and unreliable for usage on a large scale, but it still makes up for a do-it-yourself project. If you’re interested in learning how to build a water barometer I suggest giving this article a read: How to build a water barometer. Follow the exact steps from that article and you should have your own water barometer in no time.

water barometer

The only materials you’ll need to build a weather glass barometer are: a clear glass jar (about 18 ounces), a clear straight-neck bottle (about 12 ounces), food colorant (whatever color you like, doesn’t really matter), a rubber band.

STEP 1:

Get a bottle with a straight-neck and a jar that is tall enough for the bottle to sit in upside down without having the neck touch the jar’s bottom. Also, the bottle must not fit so tightly as to form an air-tight seal – so take that into consideration when picking out the bottle and jar. Remove all labels, clean the bottle and jar, and flip the bottle upside down into the jar.

STEP 2:

Fill the jar with enough water to come up just over the mouth of the bottle by an inch or a little more. Add a few drops of food coloring – useful only for visual glamour. Tip the bottle and jar enough to let a little air escape from the bottle so that the liquid is now up in the neck of the bottle and level with the water in the jar.

STEP 3:

Slide the rubber band onto the outside of the jar and position it at the same level as the water. Set the barometer in a spot out of direct sunlight, where it can be observed but won’t get knocked over – an ideal place would be to hang it to a wall near the window but not into direct sunglight. As the water rises and falls in the neck of the bottle, use the rubber band to mark the new level.

And that’s about it – that’s how a weather glass barometer is built. I hope you’ve liked my short tutorial on how to build a weather glass barometer and understood how it works. If you still don’t understand how it works you should check out our other articles related to barometers – especially the ones on how a barometer works.

• Atomic timekeeping – helps calibrate your watch by capturing the signals emitted by the three major countries that own an atomic watch. Atomic watches have an error of 1ms in 1000 years – so there isn’t a more precise watch than this.
• Solar charging – you’ll never have to worry about running out of batteries.
• Compass – helps you keep the right direction by always pointing the cardinal points.
• Altimeter – measures and displays the current altitude every two minutes so you’ll get precise information at which altitude you currently are.
• Barometer – helps you interpret atmospheric pressure variations
• Thermometer – indicates current temperature
• Tide graph -  indicates the tidal movement based on the Moon’s transit over the meridian and the lunitidal interval.
• Autolight – the Casion Barometer Watch has a powerful display powered by two light emitting diodes aka LEDs that make up for an ultra bright screen.

These are just some of the features that the regular Casio Barometer Watch holds. If you’re interested in reading more you could always view this page for visual as well as text explanations. All in all, I honestly think that the Casio Barometer Watch is a sound investment considering you’re investing in your future outdoor trips.

casio pathfinder barometer watch

Barometers – as we’ve already learned – come in different forms and shapes, ranging from liquid based barometers to state of the art digital barometers but not all of them satisfy our necessities or are in our price range. Luckily some companies such as Suunto and Casio – just to name a few – have taken the matter into their own hands and have started producing a gizmo that we like to call the barometer watch.

The barometer watch is in no way different from the pocket barometer considering they’re both small in size and can do the same thing. A barometer watch is extremely convenient as it will allow you to read atmospheric conditions on the run without being bothered from what you are currently doing. A barometer watch looks pretty much as a regular watch that sits quietly on your wrist and gives you information on the current and upcoming weather conditions. A barometer watch is good when traveling and especially when you’re going hiking as it can help you determine which days are good for climbing and which not.

This makes a barometer watch key piece of gear for many outdoor activities, including hiking, climbing, fishing, and amateur meteorology – basically, any activity where it’s a good idea to be able to quickly and easily keep an eye on the coming weather.

Barometer watches can be easily found almost anywhere – and if you’re looking for a quick deal I suggest you try scoring one at Craiglist, eBay or Amazon.

All in all, a barometer watch is a pretty fancy and useful piece of equipment that almost any outdoor passionate should own. Suunto and Casio are just two of the leading companies that produce barometer watches and – for example – a Suunto barometer watch starts at $134.99 – which may seem like a lot at first but given the fact it’s a gadget that will always tell you when it’s nice outside I think it’s a good investment.

If you’re planning on getting a barometer watch you should try reading a few more reviews of barometer watches first to aid you in your decision.

Barometers are usually used to measure the atmospheric pressure and for weather forecasting. According to a certain study published in the in-fisher magazine the weather conditions affect the feeding behavior of fish. Apparently they’ve discovered that when a cold front is building up the fish will be more eager to bite and thus you’ll catch more of them. There isn’t a valid explanation till now why this happens but it’s ‘proven science’.  Fish can go up and down in the water thereby moving through different pressure areas with little or no bad side effects. The only logical explanation so far as to why a fishing barometer works the way it does is because the variation in atmospheric pressure affects the air bladder in the fish. When the barometer is low, the bite is off, as the fish will spend most of their efforts on equalizing their air bladder and pay less attention to eating. However, when the pressure is high the chances for catching fish is far greater. Fish will feed at the onset of a storm and between the approaching fronts, or as the barometer rises and falls through the course of the day.

Unfortunately it’s not as easy as it sounds – you might know how to read a barometer and interpret it’s measurements, but as I’ve previously stated this isn’t quite an exact science – it’s more of a ‘field tested science test’ that worked on most occasions. You can get a fishing barometer from Cabela’s – a specialized fishing store and much more. Here’s a link to one of their cheap models that’s currently being rated at $12.99 and it’s got a rating of 3.6 out of 5 – so it’s not quite perfect but you’re getting what you’re paying for so it’s understandable.

Here’s a review of the Cabela Fishing Barometer:

Keep a constant eye on atmospheric pressure changes to take full advantage of the best times to be on the lake. When the barometer is on the rise, the needle moves through the multicolored key to let you know the fish are at their best. A red indicator shows you where the needle was at the last time you set it to give an instant indication of rising or falling pressure. The rubberized body provides an easy grip, wet or dry. And it comes with a lanyard to prevent accidental drops.

Below is a picture that best describes how the fish is affected by the change in the atmospheric pressure. The fishing barometer is used to interpret such signs and give results based on those interpretations. All in all, a fishing barometer is a must-have tool for every professional fisher and not only. As a rookie fisher it could help you improve your fishing skills.

fishing barometer

You could easily get at any time a Howard Miller Barometer for ‘cheap’ at Bizrate – click this link. That’s not the only place where you could get a Howard Miller Barometer but you could also try eBay or Amazon as those are the best places to get a cheap deal. On a side note you should try scoring some deals on Craigslist – you might get lucky and hit the jackpot with a cheapish Howard Miller Barometer.

howard miller barometer

Above you have pictured a Howard Miller Barometer – a masterpiece of technology and design. The Howard Miller barometer is famous for it’s reliability and good results under all types of weather conditions. All in all, the Howard Miller Barometer is an excellent choice if you’ve got the money to invest in such a tool.

The Fortin Barometer is mostly used for meteorological measurements whenever high accuracy and reliability are required. The Fortin barometer has been particularly designed for usage in meteorological land stations. Barometers are to be hung or mounted vertical, preferably on a solid wall, and require adequate exposure and accurate management.

Out of all the possible liquid based barometers the Fortin barometer is the most popular one offering great accuracy and reliability under the harshest weather conditions. The Fortin barometer is made out of a glass tube in which a tube of mercury is suspended making the cleaning process a bit more tricky. First you will need to place the Fortin barometer on a foam pad, cloth or cushion. The barometer’s delicate glass casing is fragile and may crack if it falls over during the cleaning process so special attention is required. Place the Fortin barometer in an upright position to keep the mercury from shifting from side to side. Lean the barometer against a steady surface, such as a wall and then wipe the barometer with a dry cloth to remove most loose surface dust and debris, use light pressure to avoid scratching the barometer’s glass casing with any bits of dust that are caught in the cloth. Finally you will need to wet a second piece of cloth until it’s damp to the touch. Spray the barometer with some glass cleaner, afterwards wipe it with the damp cloth and allow it to dry thoroughly before placing it back where it belongs.

fortin barometer

So when you read a barometer the needle will gradually rise up the scale from day to day. In most cases, a high pressure cell means calm, clear, sunny weather, and as the needle moves up the scale, the increase in pressure is suggesting fine, or “fair” weather is on the way. Similarly, as the high passes over the daily change in the needle’s position will show a decrease in the air pressure, and suggests that if this continues you will experience a period of low pressure. Of course, as in most things to do with weather and life, it’s not quite that simple to read a barometer, which means that although the pressure changes recorded by your barometer have some predictive value, they won’t always be right. For example, if the center of a high passes at a certain distance from where you’re located, you may not experience the fair weather that your barometer predicted before the pressure, and the needle begins to fall. Another general rule of thumb in “how to read a barometer” is that very high pressure readings may indicate windy conditions to follow. The reasoning behind this is that an extreme reading usually means a high pressure gradient to the next low, and high pressure gradients mean strong winds. This rule doesn’t apply in quite the same way to very low pressures. While the pressure gradient will certainly be high, the low is actually the focus of the winds, and unless you happen to be under the eye of a hurricane, the strong winds have already arrived. But you can, if you know how to read a barometer ,turn it into a very useful forecasting tool, but you will need to keep records of the weather to do so. Apart from pressure changes, you can record wind direction, wind direction changes, cloud cover and type of clouds, and the occurrences of rain, snow or thunderstorms.

So let’s recap on what you need to know about how to read a barometer:

Get a regular mercury barometer and start measuring the atmospheric pressure around you by simply measuring how high the mercury column goes up or down. The way you’re going to measure it is from bottom to top using a simpler ruler, keeping in mind that under regular atmospheric pressure the vacuum at the top of the barometer is at almost 30 inches (29.92 to be more precise). When the mercury column drops below that point, we’re experiencing a drop in atmospheric pressure and that means we’re going to get bad weather. This thing works viceversa as well so if the mercury column rises you can expect nicer weather. All in all learning how to read a barometer is a good thing if you’re an outdoor enthusiast and want to know how to plan your trips.