May 26, 2009
Bowling
Green, Ky. - The ever-changing nature of Kentucky’s weather was the topic of conversation Tuesday
morning in Grayson County as U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell helped officially launch the Kentucky Mesonet.
“I’m pleased to be here today to join in this celebration,” McConnell said as he presented Western Kentucky University officials with a $2.905 million check to signify the federal appropriations he has secured for the statewide project.
“Senator, we thank you for all you’ve done for Western Kentucky University and for Kentucky,” WKU President Gary Ransdell said.
Dr. Ransdell also thanked Grayson County School Superintendent Barry Anderson for providing a site for the station and thanked legislators and community officials for their support of the project.
The Grayson County site, adjacent to Lawler Elementary School and Grayson County High School off of U.S. 62 in Leitchfield, is one of 25 stations that are operational.
“The Mesonet will help protect lives and property and that’s the goal of the National Weather Service,” said John Gordon of the NWS forecast office in Louisville.
The Kentucky Mesonet is a statewide weather and climate monitoring network collecting real-time weather and climate data on temperature, precipitation, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and direction. Data is packaged into observations every five minutes and transmitted to the Kentucky Climate Center at WKU every five minutes, 24 hours per day, throughout the year and is available online at www.kymesonet.org.
Additional Mesonet station installations are scheduled in 12 other counties with site searches and negotiations under way in 32 more.
“I’ve been encouraged by the enthusiasm we’ve seen for the Mesonet project at the local level,” said Dr. Stuart Foster, Mesonet director and state climatologist at the Kentucky Climate Center at WKU.
The Kentucky Mesonet supports a variety of products to serve needs across the state, including agriculture, education, energy, emergency management, engineering and construction, recreation, transportation, water supply management and weather forecasting.
Anderson said the Mesonet data is valuable not only in classroom instruction but for weather closing decisions when “it’s really nice to have the live data from Leitchfield at 4:30 in the morning.”
“Kentucky’s climate is a valuable natural resource and is an ever-present threat to us,” Dr. Foster said.
Dr. Foster listed extreme weather events such as an April 2007 freeze, the drought of 2007, record-breaking and drought-breaking rainfall in October 2007, midwinter severe storms in early 2008, hurricane-force winds from remnants of Ike in September 2008 and the ice storm of January 2009, but noted that “ordinary daily weather matters to Kentucky.”
The Mesonet has partnered with universities, school districts, businesses, farmers and others for site locations. The National Weather Service and media outlets are utilizing the Mesonet data for weather forecasts and reports.
Initial funding for the project was secured by Sen. McConnell through a series of federal appropriations for the Kentucky Climate Center, part of WKU’s Applied Research and Technology Program in the Ogden College of Science and Engineering.
The Mesonet’s first station at the WKU farm in Warren County became operational in May 2007. Other stations are located in Adair, Allen, Barren, Breathitt, Bullitt, Caldwell, Calloway, Carroll, Casey, Christian, Fayette, Franklin, Grayson, Hopkins, Jackson, Knox, Lincoln, Logan, McLean, Mercer, Ohio, Owen, Rowan and Taylor. Additional site installations are scheduled for Breckinridge, Crittenden, Cumberland, Johnson, Lewis, Madison, Marshall, Metcalfe, Morgan, Owsley, Pike and Union.
More WKU news is available at http://www.wku.edu/news/index.html and at http://wkunews.wordpress.com/.
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