The Veteran Weather Station www.gympieweather.com has been in service for nineteen years now and during this time it has been solely maintained by myself. It has grown from a small hobby to a passion that now sees some 3.5 million hits per month... personally, I think that is absolutely astounding! Many thanks go to Ian Ward and Mick Dale of www.spiderweb.com.au who have helped and hosted the site each year at no extra cost to me.
Over the past 19 years the recording station has been directly struck by lightning three times. The first came through a strike to an electric fence unit housed in the same shed as the web-cam server. The resulting damage being transferred through the LAN cables and destroying all the computers in the system. The second strike totally destroyed all the sensitive recording equipment as well as the web-cam and network cards. The weather station is now on it's fourth set of  WX recording equipment due to a third strike entering the telephone line. Every appliance in the premises was destroyed with a total replacement figure of  $12,000.00, but thankfully most of the equipment was replaced under insurance.
Due to the nature of the weather site it has to run 24/7 including the duration of severe storms, for this reason I have installed wireless connections to the sensors as well as to the internet www.skymesh.net.au  hopefully to alleviate future storm damage. The combined cost of running and maintaining this site is in excess of $1000.00 per year when things do go right. If you enjoy using this site and would like to help to make it even better, just click on the donate button at the top of the page, even one dollar will be most appreciated. Thank you for allowing me to serve you, God bless... Ted Uebergang.