Most people turn to
weather reports
to help plan their days. If rain is predicted, you take along
your umbrella. If a warm, sunny day is expected, you feel safe leaving the
umbrella at home.
But accurate, local weather data has many more far-reaching
applications.
Janice Hale owns and
operates Hillcrest
Orchards, an 80-acre apple farm in Ellijay, Ga. She needs
precise temperature
readings to plan her pesticide sprayings. She can’t get that
from a regional
television weather broadcast.
To get the degree
data she needs,
Hale turns to the University of Georgia’s Automated
Environmental Monitoring
Network, a collection of 50-weather stations located across the
state.
Planning pesticide
spraying
“I have to monitor
the degree days,”
said Hale. “This helps me determine when the cottling moths are
laying their
eggs and makes the chemicals more effective.”
These moths feed on
the leaves and
apples and can devastate an apple crop. Knowing when and how
often to spray
makes sense for Hale, both economically and
environmentally.
Each UGA weather
station monitors
air temperature, soil temperature, humidity, rainfall, solar
radiation, wind
speed and wind direction. This information is updated hourly
and posted to the
network’s web site, www.Georgiaweather.net.
The weather network
was developed
in 1991 and is the brainchild of Gerrit Hoogenboom, a professor
with UGA’s College
of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
His original goal
was to have one
station at each of UGA’s nine agricultural experiment stations.
Eleven years
and 50 weather stations later, Hoogenboom now hopes to
eventually have a weather
station in every Georgia county. And agribusiness
owners across the
state aren’t complaining.
Preventing freeze
damage
The newly
established grape industry
in White County, near Gainesville, will benefit, says Michael
Harris, the county’s
extension agent. The wind direction and speed data could save
the crop this
winter.
“When the winds die
down, the frost
will be more likely,” said Harris. “With our local weather
station’s help, we’ll
have time to get protection ready and fired up.”
On a personal note,
Harris’ favorite
part of the weather station is the soil temperature
reading.
“In the past, I’ve
gone out to area
farms with a hand-held soil probe that’s not very accurate,” he
said. “Now,
I can do my job more efficiently and without leaving the
office.”
On the opposite side
of the state,
county agent Tucker Price in Quitman County shares Harris’
enthusiasm.
“Until our weather
station was installed
this summer, I had to rely on weather data from the Dawson
(Ga.) site two counties
away,” said Price.
He says cotton and
peanut growers
in his county will be able to use the weather station’s soil
temperature data
to help them plan their crops.
Scheduling prescribed
“And the foresters
here already have
plans to use the wind speed and humidity data to plan
prescribed burns,” said
Price.
In south Georgia,
blueberry farmers
in Brantley County were losing 80 percent of their Southern
Highbush blueberry
crop each year to early freezes by relying on television
weather
reports broadcasted
from Jacksonville, Fl.
“Losses from the
February 2002 freeze
were a whopping 80 percent of the early maturing varieties,”
said Bob Boland,
Brantley County extension agent. “The growers can now use the
UGA weather station
as a management tool to guide them on when to start freeze
protection.”
Greenhouse growers
in Georgia area
also finding the weather stations instrumental.
“The weather station
in our county
helped one of our greenhouse growers monitor the irrigation
schedule for more
than 60,000 poinsettias last Christmas,” said Scott Daniell,
Paulding County
extension agent.
The grower uses rain
collected in
an abandoned gravel pit for irrigation. He uses the weather
network website
to monitor rainfall.
Educational uses,
too
The weather station
is located on
the campus of Paulding County High School and is used in the
vocational horticulture
and science technology classes there.
Daniell also uses
the website when
he speaks to elementary school students.
“I show them the
differences in the
weather in a south Georgia county compared to a north Georgia
county,” he said.
“Then I tell them about the agricultural crops grown in the
different counties
and this helps state geography.”
Back at Janice
Hale’s apple orchard,
she uses the weather stations as a teaching tool, too. Her farm
hosts more than 15,0000
students each year.
“I always tell them
how we use the
weather to help control pests,” said Hale.
Over the years,
Hoogenboom has seen
some unique uses for the weather station network that was
originally established
for agricultural uses.
“We’ve heard that
many deer hunters
pull up our website to check the weather on their hunting
land,” said Hoogenboom.
“And a gentleman recently told me he uses the weather data to
plan his home
heating schedule. I’m often surprised at the uses people find
for our weather
stations.”
