Texans know the saying, and foreigners who come here learn it quickly: If you don't like the weather, wait a minute. It'll change.

Facts back up that adage. Texas has some of the most volatile weather in the nation, with ice and snow storms, heat waves, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, droughts and flooding.

When an ice storm caused power outages from Fort Worth to Beaumont in January 1997, utility crews were out repairing downed lines while another storm was moving across the state to knock them down again, said Leslie Kjellstrand of the Texas Public Utility Commission.

Having to repair the lines again cost utility companies unnecessarily, but precise weather information provided by a MesoNet system would have spared the expense, Kjellstrand said. Repair crews could have held off until the barrage was over.

Kjellstrand said at least half of utility outages are weather-related, and a MesoNet would be valuable for planning use of the utility resources, among other things.

A MesoNet is a mesoscale, or small scale, automated weather observation network with real-time data collection and dissemination capability, said Gary Sickler, Texas MesoNet Program Manager.

"Today I would say Texas has one of the more inferior weather collection systems in the United States," Sickler said.

A meeting is set for Monday in Austin to discuss the possibility of changing that.

The Texas MesoNet Roundup is from 1-5p.m. Monday at the University of Texas Thompson Conference Center. The four-hour seminar will cover the importance of surface and lower atmosphere weather observations to improve severe weather forecasts and weather awareness, Sickler said. Experts will review the Texas MesoNet Program and learn how effectively Oklahoma has used its statewide network.

Though keeping an eye on the atmosphere is the job of the National Weather Service, only 50 of Texas' 254 counties report observations to the weather service. That leaves 80 percent exposed to the elements with little data collection for forecasters to use.

Mesoscale weather events such as thunderstorms, tornadoes and flash floods are small by meteorological standards and difficult to predict, Sickler said. But they have the greatest impact on the state.

Since 1993, Oklahoma has had a MesoNet that gives forecasters there an edge on what's happening in the atmosphere, said Doug Speheger, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla.

"It gives us a much more dense network of observations that help us pinpoint things a lot closer," Speheger said. "We can get a really precise indication of which areas are under threat of severe weather."

Oklahoma has 114 MesoNet sites around the state, with at least one in each of its 77 counties, Speheger said.

Dan Smith, the National Weather Service's chief of scientific services for the southern United States, said a tight net of automated weather observation sites would likely improve forecast accuracy in Texas.

"The large number of observations would fill in the gaps in data we now get," Smith said. "One of our biggest forecasting problems is getting a handle on moisture."

With a proposed 700 MesoNet sites covering the state and into the Gulf of Mexico, forecasters could track atmospheric moisture and many other weather components with much greater accuracy.

Sickler said a MesoNet program similar to Oklahoma's would cost about $31 million to start up and about $9 million annually to maintain, but it would save Texas farms, businesses and the state millions of dollars each year.

He said such a system could assess forest fire danger, monitor air pollution and provide frost, heat stress and soil moisture conditions to farmers. It could help utility companies plan the use of their resources by telling them where to position repair crews before storms hit. Offshore observation sites could follow hurricane activity and track environmental disasters such as oil spills.

Users of the Texas MesoNet might have to pay a small annual subscription fee and have access to the network data through an Internet site.

With more than 8 million utility customers in Texas, some proponents of a Texas MesoNet say spreading the expense through a utility surcharge would cost each consumer pennies per year.

Oklahoma's MesoNet was born when Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma joined forces in 1987 and approached the governor's office with the plan. In December 1990, the Oklahoma MesoNet Project was funded with $2 million in oil-overcharge funds available from a court settlement. The universities contributed almost $350,000 each for a grand total of $2.7 million, enough to pay for the 114 automated stations that cover the state.

Kjellstrand said a Texas MesoNet is of great interest to her agency not only for weather-related utility repairs but also because it would allow a more efficient use of hydroelectric and wind power.

With a MesoNet, utility companies would know when reservoirs would be filling up and how much power to expect from wind farms.

"The MesoNet could play into a better use of renewable resources," she said. "Everybody's interested in that."

But paying for it through a utility surcharge is another story, Kjellstrand said.

"That would be up to the commissioners and the Legislature," she said. "The other side to that is everybody is looking at ways to lower electric bills."