I hesitate to say that no one needs copper weathervanes anymore. Sailors needed to know the way the weather was blowing when they wanted to take their sail-driven ships out on the water, but those days are long past. Airports have windsocks, of course, to warn pilots of windshear, and various baseball parks have windsocks or weathervanes as well, so that the batters know where to hit the ball so they can get a homerun!

But these days, copper weathervanes
are used for decorative purposes only, and there’s a wide variety of decorative weathervanes to choose from.

For myself, I prefer the “action-oriented” weathervanes – those featuring an airplane or a ship,or even a lighthouse. But roosters are very popular, as are butterflies and dragonflies. The whimsical will also like weathervanes topped with a golfer in full swing, or a moose in the middle of ambling down a highway, an angel or a flag.

However, copper weathervanes are not just for outdoor use. UpsideLiving also offers indoor weathervanes, of appropriate size, that sit on one’s desk.

The weathervanes come in two finishes. The gleaming, brand-new copper finish is my favorite, but lots of people favor the green patina that comes with age. Those weathervanes are aged by a special process to give them that look.

Ever wonder what the world’s largest weather vane is? Why, it’s a DC-3 – a real DC-3, with thousands of hours in the air before it was retired, mounted on a stand near an airport in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. The plane is mounted on pivots so that it can easily turn with only 5 knots of wind – and it always points into the wind, “as if it would love to take flight again.”