The Kentucky Mesonet, a collection of weather stations across the state, will soon open its 78th operational site in Russell County.
The Mesonet’s headquarters are located at WKU, where Kentucky Mesonet director Jerald Brotzge works as a meteorology professor. Brotzge said the addition of the new site will increase the data fed to the National Weather Service.
“All of our operational forecasts are made better by the inclusion of this data,” Brotzge said. “The more data that we feed the numerical models, the more accurate the weather forecast. So the more gaps we can fill across the state, the more accurate those local forecasts will be.”
He said the additional data collection also benefits local areas, as it is used within a variety of fields.
“Locally, data from individual weather stations are used by local county level, emergency managers, farmers to train transportation agencies, even public health,” Brotzge said. “There are a lot of different ways local data are used by the community.”
The Mesonet currently has 78 operational sites across 74 counties. The newest site is located on a hay farm, and Brotzge said the data collected will help with hay production
“That station will help facilitate that farm to know when to plant, when to harvest and help aid their hay production through the work of that particular farm,” Brotzge said. “We hope to help farmers statewide learn more about how to apply weather information to hay production.”
The headquarters at WKU process the data collected from individual stations, as well as works on quality control and analyzing total data into statewide products, Brotzge said.
Source: wkuherald.com
Photo Credit: Kentucky Mesonet
Categories: Kentucky, Business