About Dayboro Weather
The weather side of dayboro.au started in April 2004, when I bolted the first station to the hill here at Lyndhurst. The first year and a bit of readings did not survive, and since I bang on abotu accuracy everywhere else on this site I will say that plainly: the oldest record I can actually show you is 3 December 2005. So measuring since 2004, provable since December 2005. Either way it is more than 20 years of Dayboro weather, measured on the spot, not borrowed from a station 30km away.
Why a Dayboro forecast has to come from Dayboro
For the first years it was simple. The station logged, I read the numbers, and I argued with the BOM forecast over breakfast. Anyone who has lived in this valley knows why that argument exists. Dayboro sits in a bowl between the ranges, and the official forecast for "Brisbane North" regularly has nothing to do with what lands on your shed roof. Fog that Samford never sees. Storms that split at Mt Mee and rejoin past Petrie. You can only forecast that from inside the valley, wiht your own data.
2012, and why I kept going
Then 2012 happened. A health event turned my private and professional life upside down, and for a while the station more or less died with me. Rehab taught me something I did not expect: the brain needs load, same as a muscle. My neuropsychologist and I worked out, through plenty of trial and error, that picking fights with weather data is genuinely good therapy. Work until the headache arrives, back off, do it again. I get that headache 90% of the time I sit behind the keyboard. I do it anyway, because when I stop, I can measure the decline in myself faster than I can measure a cold front.
So the weather reports came back, or better said, they came back different. Friends helped me rebuild. We added online models, satellite imagery, soil sensors, and the older signals too, the behaviour of the birds and the paddock before a change. On this moment the station runs 24 hours a day and feeds everything you see on this site: the current conditions, the 7 day forecast, the flood and fire outlooks, the lot.
The cows and the model
In 2023 the weather cows arrived. Bruce and Wally are AI generated, I will not pretend otherwise, and they exist because a forecast people actually read beats a perfect forecast nobody opens. Behind the cows sits the Dayboro Model, the local forecasting blend I run against the valley's own history. The cows are the front of house. The model is the kitchen.
Graded in public, wins and stuff ups
Here is the part I reckon matters most, and the part almost no weather site will do. I grade my own forecasts in public. Every forecast gets compared against what the station actually measured, and the results, good and ugly, are published on the forecast accuracy page. When the Dayboro Model beats the BOM, you will see it there. When it stuffs up a rain call, you will see that too. Twenty years of data is worth nothing if I only show you the wins.
That is the whole story. A station on a hill since April 2004, a brain that needs the workout, and a valley that deserves a forecast made from inside it. If you want the numbers rather than the history, the weather reports are the place to start.