Launched in December 2004, KirklandWeather.com is a non-profit hobby website. It's not affiliated with nor endorsed by the City of Kirkland or any official weather agency.

Local weather data was orignally collected by an Oregon Scientific WMR 968 wireless weather station. Since October 2011, the site uses a Davis Vantage VUE. Data from sensors is transmitted every 2.5 seconds and then immediately processed by Weather Display, a specialized weather station software program. Weather Display runs on a dedicated HP ProDesk 600 G1 desktop computer with an Intel Core i5-4590 3.30 GHz CPU with 20 GB RAM running Windows 11 Pro. Real-time data is transferred over a 1 Gbit Ziply Fiber data connection to our web hosting company, Hostinger.

The Vantage VUE weather station includes an anemometer, rain gauge, and a thermo-hydro sensor connected to wireless data transmitters.

The integrity of the collected weather data is monitored throughout the day and compared with other reporting stations in the area. KirklandWeather.com data is accurate and within the deviations seen by nearby reporting stations. View monitoring analysis data at CWOP Quality Reports.

As part of the CWOP program and Weather Undergound, KirklandWeather.com real-time conditions are listed as a National Weather Service observation site for Kirkland. Our real-time data (temperature) is used by many services as the source temperature data for ZIP Code 98033 and the surrounding Kirkland area, including the National Weather Service and the Washington State Department of Transportation.

KirklandWeather.com Design

This site is heavily customized from a template design by Tom Chaplin at CarterLake.org. Special thanks go to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather and Ken True at Saratoga Weather for developing the foundation of PHP scripts that have been modified to run this site. Additional code and scripts for parsing historical data and weather forecasts were created by Sam Neely.

Three design goals drive what you see. The first goal is a neat and clean appearance. Second, the main page is designed to be very lightweight with minimal graphic files. This ensures that the page always loads quickly. The final goal is easy maintenance and updating. This site extensively relies on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which enables quick changes to design elements without changing the HTML and PHP source files.

KirklandWeather.com is designed and tested with the latest versions of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox. These web browsers represent 90% of the browsers used to access our site. KirklandWeather.com is also viewable with Brave and Opera, but isn't actively tested with these browsers.

If you're interested in creating your own weather site, there is a strong community of weather enthusiasts at the Weather Watch Forum.

Memberships

KirklandWeather.com is a member and shares its data with the Northwest Weather Network, Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP Member CW5022), and WeatherUnderground (Station ID KWAKIRKL8). We are also affiliated with Weather Station Finder and WeatherMatrix.

About Kirkland, Washington

Kirkland, located in King County, Washington, is a vibrant suburb of Seattle, nestled on the eastern shores of Lake Washington. As part of the region known as the "Eastside," it is a key player in the area's thriving tech hub. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Kirkland ranks as the sixth-largest city in King County and the 12th largest in Washington state, with a population of 92,175.

Home to the second-largest U.S. development center for Google, Kirkland is also the site of Amazon's satellite manufacturing facility for Project Kuiper. Additionally, GoDaddy operates a large office here, and several companies call Kirkland their corporate headquarters, including INRIX, Kenworth, Ziply Fiber, and Wyze.

The city is rich in sports and business history, having once housed the Seattle Seahawks' training facility and Costco's corporate headquarters. The well-known Kirkland Signature store brand is a nod to Costco's roots in this city.

The city's founding story traces back to 1886 when Peter Kirk, an East Coast businessman, relocated to Washington to capitalize on iron deposits in the Cascade Mountains. With limestone and coal mines nearby, as well as the construction of new train lines, Kirk envisioned Kirkland as a thriving industrial hub. Although he wasn’t a U.S. citizen and couldn't personally purchase land, he partnered with Leigh S.J. Hunt, owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, to buy the property needed for the Moss Bay Iron and Steel Works. This venture laid the foundation for Kirkland’s future. Peter Kirk dreamed of turning the area into a "Pittsburgh of the West."

Though the steel mill, completed in 1892, never produced steel due to financial difficulties exacerbated by the Panic of 1893, the town continued to grow and was officially incorporated in 1905, with a population of just 400. In the following decades, industries like sawmilling and shipbuilding became the backbone of the local economy.

Kirkland expanded over the years, consolidating with the neighboring town of Houghton in 1968 and annexing Totem Lake in 1974. Additional growth occurred in 1988 when the neighborhoods of South Juanita, North Rose Hill, and South Rose Hill were added. On June 1, 2011, the city grew even further, annexing over 30,000 residents from the Kingsgate, Finn Hill, and Juanita neighborhoods.

Today, Kirkland shares much in common with nearby Eastside cities like Bellevue and Redmond, boasting a wealthy and educated population. Its economic prosperity is largely fueled by technology companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo of America, and SpaceX’s Starlink, as well as Google’s large Kirkland campus. Additionally, Amazon continues to grow its presence here, including its Project Kuiper satellite division.