I use an acurite 06002RM temperature and humidity sensor with a rtl 433 compatible receiver plugged into home assistant and an rtl2mqtt add on. It’s indoor/outdoor and has worked well for all sorts of weather. Combined with a sun shade and it’s a good solution I think, and completely local.

We can’t ever stop this kind of stuff, but with something like fail2ban you can set it up to block on too many failures.

Really though - ensuring your system is kept up to date and uses strong passwords or use a SSH keys is the best defence. Blocking doesn’t prevent them from trying a few times. Moving SSH to a non standard port will stop most of the automated attacks but it won’t stop someone who is dedicated.