01/31/08 AgWeatherNet expanding

Washington Ag January 31, 2008 Stormy winter weather hasn't stopped the Washington State University AgWeatherNet team from retrofitting and expanding the weather reporting system in eastern Washington. Krebs: "We are actually making a lot better progress right now than I thought we would give the inclement weather conditions we have experienced lately. I feel bad for them but they are braving the elements out there." That's Robert Krebs, AgWeatherNet Project Operations Manager. AWN as it's called, provides online access to raw data derived from a network of 77 publicly owned, regional weather stations. Most stations are located in the irrigated regions of eastern Washington, but recently a station was installed at WSU's Spillman Agronomy Farm near Pullman. The station is equipped with sensors for monitoring and recording air temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, solar radiation, leaf wetness, soil temperature and moisture at a depth of eight inches, and rainfall. WSU's Lind Dryland Research Station in Adams County was also recently added to AWN and other dryland locations are planned near Almira, Anatone, Fairfield, Rearden, Ritzville, St. Andrews, St. John and Waitsburg. Discussions are also underway for integrating weather station data from WSU's Cook Agronomy Farm and the Palouse Conservation Research Station. Anyone can access the network's weather data at weather.wsu.edu I'm Bob Hoff.