Weather is often the unknown variable in the productivity of your ranch. It's useful to know wind speed and direction before you start a controlled burn and the true possibility of rain before you cut your hay, but if you live in a rural area, this information is near impossible to find. But, Texas A&M University has a plan to meet these weather needs with the Texas MesoNet -- automated weather sites that will measure specific conditions in each county.

The evening weather forecast is possibly the most watched television segment by the ranching community. The weather is one factor that affects the daily operation activities but one over which they have no control. The only choice is to learn as much about it as possible and plan ahead accordingly.

But if you live in the rural outskirts of the viewing area, the flashy weather maps and five-day forecasts donıt do you much good. If you live even 30 miles away from the televised newscast, you must adjust forecasted temperatures, rainfall expectations and the arrival of fronts on a regular basis because the weatherman's predictions aren't as accurate for your area. Because only 50 of the 254 Texas counties have routine, real-time weather observations, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are collaborating to set up the Texas MesoNet, 600 automated weather sites distributed across the state that will measure specific environmental conditions. For the first time, farmers and ranchers will have nearly instant access to reliable and timely weather data. The Texas Natural Resource Commission and Lower Colorado River Authority have also assisted with the project.

"A little after two years from the start up, we should have a good first sweep across the state," says Dr. Gary Sickler, Texas A&M meteorology professor and MesoNet program manager. "There'll be ups and downs, but for the most part it's not impossible. This is a labor of love for me, a chance to help people in the state of Texas, a chance in a lifetime."

The MesoNet will have at least one site in each county and when completed, about 30 sites in the Gulf of Mexico. Each site will measure conditions every five minutes and transmit the data to the regional centers where it will be verified and made available on the Internet in about 10 to 20 minutes. At this time, there are no specific plans to make the data available by any other means, so if your computer is not online yet, the MesoNet might be one more good reason to go ahead and take the plunge.

Basically, every 15 minutes you will be able to find out the current air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, precipitation, solar radiation, soil moisture and temperature, and leaf wetness in your county. Some sites will also measure other conditions unique to those regions.

Things like temperature and humidity data will allow more precise evapotranspiration rate calculations and will aid in irrigation scheduling, while wind data will aid decisions about pesticide or herbicide applications.

OKLAHOMA'S MESONET

Oklahoma is the only state that already has a fully operational statewide system in place, and researchers with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey at the University of Oklahoma have advised officials working on the Texas project. OU and Oklahoma State University operate 115 sites in 77 counties, and aside from occasional vandalism or lightning strikes, the sites have a near-perfect record of gathering data.

"When properly used, MesoNet data have the capacity to help save lives, save Oklahoma businesses and taxpayers millions of dollars annually, reduce energy consumption, educate the next generation of citizens and make an incalculable contribution to research projects every year," according to the Oklahoma MesoNet web site.

Ranchers in the state are already profiting from the system and some producers actually have sites on their land. Jack and Marie Ketchum, owners of Ketchum Ranch near Velma, Okla., have been keeping their own rainfall records since 1956. Since they were obviously interested in the weather, the Stephens County Extension agent thought their ranch might be a good place to set up the county's site.

"Being a rancher, you're just interested in the weather. It's part of your livelihood," Marie says. "We just look at the MesoNet as another tool." The Ketchums have about 3,000 acres and 1,000 head mixed breed cattle. The MesoNet site is about half a mile from their house.

Even though the Ketchums still keep their own rainfall records, they use the MesoNet on a regular basis to check soil and air temperatures. They have also found the reported wind speeds are helpful because "you just canıt do some things in a lot of wind."

Some Texas MesoNet sites will also be set up on private property, and Sickler encourages anyone interested to give him a call at (409) 845-3305. He said a traditional site would be 10 meters x 10 meters and must be representative of the county in which you live. Some sites with supplemental equipment such as atmospheric profilers will need to be larger to accommodate the measurements unique to your area, but all sites need to be in a relatively clear area to have proper exposure.

The Ketchums aren't responsible for taking care of their site, but if their measurements vary from the site's, they do give the researchers at OU a call to report the differences. Although they have found various ways to use the data in the operation of their ranch, Jack feels the MesoNet benefits the public at large even more than farmers and ranchers.

"Youıll be able to predict when floods will happen downstream and thatıs the most important thing," says Jack. "On some of the bigger rivers, they have two or three sites in each county, and when the information goes to the office that they got several inches of rain in a big area, then they start putting out flood warnings downstream."

POTENTIAL BENEFITS

Individual sites in each county might have given residents of South Texas a little more warning before the floods in the fall of 1998. If residents could have been notified earlier, there might have been more time to move cattle, but more importantly, lives could have been saved.

The National Weather Service River Forecast Center, responsible for forecasting flash floods and river floods, needs the real-time rain gauge data that the MesoNet would provide to help them improve the accuracy of flood warnings.

Howard Johnson, member of the Oklahoma MesoNet steering committee, said that Department of Forestry uses their system in anticipating, containing and fighting forest fires, too. Their web site has maps to show which region of the states are more susceptible to wildfires, which is useful to ranchers when theyıre planning to burn a pasture.

Some of the other potential weather forecasting improvements include:

One- to six-hour forecasts of temperature, wind, and humidity with errors reduced by 50-75%

Ability to pinpoint frontal passages and wind shifts within 15-30 minutes

Improved short-term temperature forecast by 2-4 degrees

Summer temperature forecasts within one to 2 degrees as much as 36 hours ahead of time

More precisely forecasted extreme winter events

Sickler says he hopes to have a certain amount of interactive capability with the system. Eventually you will be able to specify a particular day, month or season with additional specifications and parameters and the user-friendly, planned interactive features of the computer programming will assist you to develop the kind of data sets and graphical products you desire.

Such historical data can be used as proof in requests for relief and help predict the limitations of the land given their regional climatology. This information would also be helpful to compare the weather in previous seasons to keep seasonal projections realistic and decide how to best allocate ranch resources.

"Much of the software development will be done at Texas A&M, and the siting, calibration, instrumentation, installation and maintenance will be spearheaded out of the three universities," says Sickler. He also says they plan to involve other universities around the state in the maintenance and monitoring of the system.

LABOR INTENSIVE

Texas A&M joined the TNRCC in the initial efforts to get this project off the ground in January 1994, and since the beginning, the Oklahoma program has been the model they've followed.

"The Texas MesoNet people have come up here for tours, and we offered advice on instrumentation and the general set-up, plus lots of encouragement. We want to see them succeed," Johnson says. "The two systems would probably share data along the Panhandles of the two states because much of the severe weather that develops in the Texas Panhandle moves into Oklahoma."

Dr. Tim Doggett, assistant professor of geosciences at Texas Tech University, says they are working in West Texas to "create a pilot project to demonstrate feasibility and benefits of the statewide project on a smaller, more localized area." This is a way to get the first sites up and then incorporate it with the statewide project later. Doggett says the hardest part of the whole project so far has been developing a unified front.

"It seems like everyone weıve approached thinks itıs a great idea and it really does affect every person in the state. The hard part is having anyone attracted enough to push along our funding efforts," Doggett says.

And so, the funding battle has begun. Although the pilot project has already been guaranteed $6 million to cover the next three years, the program is in search of funds to establish the whole network. The hardware will cost about $23 million with siting and installation costing slightly more than $4 million. The project will take five years to complete, costing approximately $9.7 million a year and after commissioning, the annual cost of operation and maintenance are estimated to be about $8 million a year.

MesoNet officials would like to fund the program through the Texas Public Utilities Commission by adding a few cents to every electric bill, but some utilities have expressed reluctance about adding another charge to customers' bills. If that plan doesn't work out, "the best way would be through the Legislature," says Sickler.

Assuming everything goes as planned, the MesoNet will be funded in spring 1999, followed by survey and work in the summer of 1999 and installation of the first site within six months. Sickler says, "with a little luck, weıll have one site in every county across the state and at least 10 offshore by the end of 2001." He also says that counties that already have a reliable, automated weather information source probably wonıt have one of these sites installed during the first two years, but they will before the project is complete.

"The local weather service offices have been high in praise, and the extra data has helped in weather forecasting and the ability to anticipate and track weather," says Johnson of the Oklahoma MesoNet. "You donıt realize what benefits there are until it's in place."

If you would like more information or to show support for this program, send letters or e-mail to Dr. Gary Sickler, Department of Meteorology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, 77843-3150; e-mail: sickler@ariel.tamu.edu. For project updates, visit the Texas MesoNet web page at http://www.met.tamu.edu/texnet/mesonet.html.