Chris Knight reports that the New York State Mesonet has planned a statewide network of 125 weather stations that would include nearly 20 sites inside the Adirondack Park.  

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 A planned statewide network of 125 weather stations would include nearly 20 sites inside the Adirondack Park.

The New York State Mesonet, funded by a $23 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is designed to provide emergency management officials with access to real-time, high-resolution data – more than they’ve ever had before – to use in preparing for and responding to natural disasters like hurricanes. Organizers also say the network will have applications for day-to-day weather forecasting, farmers, airplane pilots and others.

The push for the mesonet started in 2011 after heavy rains brought by tropical storms Irene and Lee triggered flooding that caused millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure across the state, including here in the Adirondacks.

"The funding wasn’t provided until after Superstorm Sandy (in 2012), but the genesis for the mesonet started with those flooding events," said Jerald Brotzge, the mesonet’s program manager. He’s based at SUNY Albany.

The program is modeled off of similar mesonets already in operation in other states like Oklahoma and Kentucky, Brotzge said. Each of the 125 primary stations will measure air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, atmospheric pressure, precipitation including both snowmelt and rain, and soil moisture and temperature at three different depths.

"Between all those different measurements, we hope to create a weather network that’s valuable to a number of different sectors: agriculture, emergency management, aviation, ground transportation and education," Brotzge said. "Every county will have at least one station, and the larger the county, the more stations they’ll have."

There is a current weather station system in New York, the federally operated ASOS and AWOS network, but it consists of just 25 sites and only provides data on an hourly basis, Brotzge said. One of those sites is located at the Adirondack Regional Airport in Lake Clear.

"All 125 of our sites will report data every five minutes," Brotzge said. "We will collect all that data immediately and send it back out to emergency managers in an instant. For example, we’ll be able to track and monitor rainfall around the clock. Right now, you miss a lot of rainfall in the valleys, particularly in the more mountainous terrain, because we simply can’t see it. The mesonet allows us to fill in those gaps."

Twenty of the 125 weather stations will also measure snowfall. Most of them will be within the boundaries of the Park, Brotzge said.

"Right now there’s a snow network deployed across the Catskills, monitoring the watershed for New York City," he said. "But what we don’t have is a similar program for monitoring the hydrology and snowmelt across the Adirondacks.

"Another aspect of the project is vertical profilers. Seventeen of the 125 sites will have additional equipment providing vertical information on temperature, moisture, windspeed and direction every five minutes. Right now we only have three places across the state that launch weather balloons twice daily. That just doesn’t provide the atmospheric info the weather service needs for truly accurate modeling and forecasting."

The raw data provided by the weather stations will be available for the public to view for free in real-time, but there will probably be a fee for viewing archived, analyzed or "value-added" data, Brotzge said.

Brooke Tabor, a Burlington, Vermont-based National Weather Service meteorologist, said he’s aware of the project and thinks it will be a benefit.

"We’re going to have more data available, and that will lead to better analysis of conditions, especially in complex terrain like the northern Adirondacks or the St. Lawrence River Valley," he said. "It’s also supposed to include a profile up Whiteface (Mountain), so we’ll get a vertical profile of the weather. That will be helpful. It will also help with snow depths and for the flood potential in the spring time: How much snow is in the mountains and how much, when it releases (and) could come into the waterways and cause flooding?"

Each mesonet site will include a 30-foot-tall tower, where most of the sensors will be located, surrounded by a fence. So far, organizers have identified 50 of their planned 125 sites, and they’re looking for more.

"We’re looking for a 30-by-30 foot piece of property where we could put a weather station," Brotzge said. "We have a number of criteria. For example, the sites can’t be in flood zone or wetland. It really needs to be on a generally flat area with no trees preferably within 300 feet. Most of the sites so far will be placed on private land.

"We have 19 sites planned right now inside the Park boundaries. We’re working closely with the (state Adirondack Park Agency) to approve those sites, and we’re trying to be very careful where we deploy them so as not to interfere with views or wildlife or the environment."

Of the 19 planned sites in the Park, between five and seven have been selected, Brotzge said. The goal is to have all 125 sites across the state selected by the end of the year.

For more information, visit www.nysmesonet.org.