A Christmas-time arctic blast with blizzard-force winds and blowing snow followed by a near record warm stretch is an indicator of how fast weather can change this time of year and the importance of weather forecasting in Indiana.
Most Hoosiers understand the necessity of strong weathercasting and predicting tools for farmers and agriculture, but an increasing number of businesses, not to mention schools and health care operations, rely on those tools as well. And thanks to the Indiana State Climate Office and Purdue University, those tools are becoming increasingly high tech.
So far, 38 states – including Indiana – are operating or building a mesonet, which is a network of automated weather monitoring stations, to fill the gaps between and bolster information provided by National Weather Service sites.
Oklahoma, which is one of the top states in the nation in terms of weather disasters, was first to build a state mesonet system in the mid-1990s. Other states followed after flying blind during major weather events. Maryland and Hawaii were two of the latest states to come on board. Indiana appears to be ahead of the curve.
The Purdue Mesonet was originally established in the late 1990s to collect on-farm weather data at Purdue University agricultural centers around Indiana. By 1999, the system was composed of seven sites – two in Tippecanoe County, the rest in Knox, La Porte, Whitley, Randolph, and Jennings counties. Two more were added in the early 2000s.
Researchers have used this data to better understand relationships between weather and agricultural issues such as yield, pests and disease, and crop resiliency to extreme conditions and variability.
The demand for the data produced by the mesonet has expanded beyond its original purpose, however, so an increased effort is being made to install additional sites across the state to improve the spatial density and study issues such as soil moisture, low-level temperature inversions (which can lead to fog and other disturbances) and representative coverage area for winds at varying speeds. Recent efforts also have centered on improving the amount of data publicly available on the Purdue Mesonet’s dashboard.
In 2020, a 10th mesonet station was added and in 2022 four more were added, bringing the total to 14. Indiana’s mesonet stations stretch from the state’s northwest corner to its far southeast corner.
The mesonet data’s impact is far reaching – and expanding. For example, it has helped identify local drought conditions that make farmers eligible for agriculture relief programs. It informs farmers when wind conditions are safe for spraying pesticides, and when cattle need to be sheltered from heat stress. Some states have trained wildland fire managers to use mesonet weather data to predict fire behavior. And some mesonets have recently developed the capability to track airplanes and other air traffic activity.
When tracking weather, much information typically comes from reporting stations, which are found at places like airports. While that information is incredibly helpful, there are still large portions of Indiana – sans the mesonet – that are not served.
“In any season, sometimes it is hard to gauge what is occurring, specifically in rural areas, when you don’t have a reporting station currently. And so you have to, for the lack of a better term, use interpolation to fill the gaps, essentially,” explains WISH-TV Channel 8 meteorologist Marcus Bailey.
TV stations and weather-tracking web sites have in the past relied on various sources for on-the-ground weather information, but meteorologists say the Purdue Mesonet has the potential to be more accurate and timely.
“If you don’t have truth on the ground, whether it be snow falling, how much it is, what that precipitation change over might be, that kind of stuff, then you’re having to rely on — at least as a TV meteorologist — viewers reporting, saying, ‘Here’s what’s happening,’ and that’s how we fill the gaps,” Bailey adds.
By increasing the number of weather reporting stations around the state, Bailey notes that means more people will get better information related to their location.
“When you’re in a severe weather mode and time is of the essence and you want to warn people what is happening in this specific county that has a mesonet, we can tell you down the line what they just experienced because we’re getting that real-time data,” Bailey stresses.
Another advantage of the Purdue Mesonet data is the availability of variables such as wind, soil temperature, humidity, solar radiation and other variables less common from other weather station networks.
In addition to near real-time weather data provided by the Purdue Mesonet, it regularly updates maps of the state for recent time periods depicting rainfall and temperature amounts, averages and deviations from the climatological norms. This data can be key in tracking climate change and can be strong predictors for future weather and environmental events, according to meteorologists.
When properly used, mesonet data has the capacity to help save lives, save businesses and taxpayers millions of dollars annually, reduce energy consumption, educate the next generation of citizens and make an incalculable contribution to research projects every year. The most notable professions that a mesonet influences are weather forecasting, agriculture, education, emergency management, wildland fire management, energy industry, transportation and scientific research.
“Mesonets are without a doubt among the most important data sets we use at the National Weather Service Forecast Office,” says David Andra science operations officer at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma.
“In addition to routine forecast and warning operations, the mesonet is a major part of many of our applied research projects. It is also invaluable for handling various disaster support situations including wildfires, chemical spills and catastrophes like the Oklahoma City Murrah Building bombing. The mesonet provides a unique tool to view weather on the mesoscale. We depend on it.”
