One landowner along the Red River has a new addition for the farm. The 30-ft tower is a sophisticated weather tower that will relay needed information to the ULM hub.

According to the Louisiana State Mesonet website, Mesonets are interconnected networks of automated weather stations installed across an entire state or region. They are built to improve the detection and monitoring of local or regional weather conditions. Every mesonet station collects data on temperature, relative humidity, pressure, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, and precipitation at intervals ranging from 3 to 60 seconds to be sent to the University of Louisiana at Monroe Mesonet team.

The Louisiana State Mesonet will provide weather data at frequent intervals across areas of the state with current data coverage gaps. Louisiana is a diverse state, both in landscape and weather conditions from north to south and west to east. Many stations spread across the state’s different regions are required to capture the diversity in weather and climate conditions and to fill coverage gaps in the other surface observing systems.  

To determine target areas for site installations, the ULM mesonet team worked with other weather and climate leaders across the state, such as meteorologists at the National Weather Service, to identify locations most in need of supplemental weather data. This resulted in a list of 50 candidate locations. Actual site selection within the 50 candidate locations is based on finding locations with suitable weather instrument siting considerations, and securing permissions/suitable site agreements with land owners.

Mesonet data will always be free to the public for personal use or educational establishments for pedagogy. Once stations come online, the real-time data will be publicly available for free through data visualizations via the Louisiana Mesonet website.