Tempest Weather Station 2026 Review

WeatherFlow Tempest Weather Station 2026 Review

We've recently had a lot of bad weather where I'm from. As a previous owner of a lower quality weather station (that will remain unnamed), I wanted to upgrade to something. It's been a half dozen years or so, so I scoured the market to see what's out there.

If you simply do a search on Amazon for 'weather station', you're going to have a lot of results. It seems like some of the big players are Ambient Weather, La Crosse, ECOWITT, and AcuRite. I wasn't looking to go with the cheapest option, but I didn't want to hassle with multiple sensor devices that all needed mounted in different spots. I also didn't need a separate monitor to put on the wall somewhere.

At the end of the day, it came down to Tempest from WeatherFlow, or a similar product from Ambient Weather.

It looks like WeatherFlow only makes the Tempest Weather Station . It appealed to me because it's literally one device I could attach to my deck and call it a day. It comes with a WiFi hub you plug in and pair - very simple. Then the phone app - which is also functional, streamlined, and simple. You can also access your weather station via a web browser, if you turn on the feature that shares it to the WeatherFlow site.

Unboxing

Let's dig in. Overall, the box is pretty ordinary.

Then, as mentioned, we don't have many items in here. We have the main device, WiFi hub, a cardboard box with the power cable for the WiFi hub, a post mount, a flat mount, and some minor instructions.

Mobile App

The mobile app itself is fairly straightforward and seemingly well-designed. You can add other cities to your list of locations, or turn on weather maps (not shown). I actually cancelled a subscription to a weather service since I now have this.

You can look back at the weather history, check out maps, change a bunch of settings, and integrate with various smart home systems (untested). All in all, it's functional, polished, and it works. It doesn't come across as some bug-riddled, janky app - like I've seen with other weather stations.

Security and Attack Surface

Now, having found security issues in weather stations before, security became a concern of mine in any new one I'd purchase. I didn't want anything exposed directly to the internet, or something with a long track record of security issues.

On your internal network, all you will see is your WiFi hub. Nmaps of this didn't prove useful. My major concern in this ecosystem, as I see it, would be the mobile app, and associated remote API endpoints, along with OS issues on the devices themselves.

There doesn't appear to be much information out there about previous WeatherFlow/Tempest security issues. This mentioned (a long time ago) about some minor geolocation information disclosure

• https://community.tempest.earth/t/station-privacy-and-pii-concerns/175

Other than that, I didn't find much in the way of issues that have been disclosed.

Officially, WeatherFlow says this, which I will admit is a strong, security-positive claim:

"Security and privacy are as important as functionality and usability. We take it seriously at every level: device-to-device, device-to-app, device-to-cloud, cloud-to-app. Our devices run a purpose-built, embedded operating system that doesn't have the weaknesses and potential attack points that a general-purpose OS has. There are no open ports or protocols and no way to “log in”. Without that, there's no way to “hack into” them. Further, all network communication is initiated by our device. The only communication is to our servers. There is no way for a malicious user to hack our device because the only way for any software to get on it would be to update the firmware. And all firmware must be downloaded from our servers, using a secure channel. And the firmware is encrypted with a per-device key, which is validated before install on the local device, meaning that any firmware downloaded from a malicious source would be rejected by the device."

Future Work

• Hardware breakdowns of the hub and the weather station device itself
• OS investigation - WeatherFLow claims that "devices run a purpose-built, embedded operating system that doesn't have the weaknesses and potential attack points that a general-purpose OS has". We will see about that.
• Mobile app investigation

Conclusion

• If you're in the market for essentially a hassle-free weather station that is full of features - go with the Tempest from WeatherFlow

• If you're looking for a larger ecosystem, and you may want to add various devices later, checkout Ambient Weather