The SD Mesonet (Mesonet.sdstate.edu) was awarded a large contract to expand the network to about 140 weather stations in South Dakota over the next five years (https://www.sdstate.edu/news/2020/09/sdsu-one-four-schools-chosen-lead-u... ). Although the network expansion is driven by improving flood forecasting and precipitation measurements, this presents an opportunity for additional and improved weather sensors and inversion monitoring across the soybean growing region of South Dakota.
The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the sponsor of the major network expansion. USACE is not interested in crop production, but the station platform and infrastructure that serves as the “basic” weather station allows for additions to be made. This project proposal requests funds for the addition of a total of five thermometers to directly measure inversions.
In FY22, five Mesonet stations will be upgraded to meet the USACE requirements in the primary soybean growing area in South Dakota. This proposal requests one additional thermometer for each of these five stations, to augment the one existing thermometer that will be in place for the USACE for direct inversion measurement. The five locations in the East River region slated for upgrades in FY22 are: Faulkton, Leola, Bowdle, Highmore and Groton. All of these stations except for Groton have been offline and will be brought back into operation. Groton is requiring an upgraded tower and will need a new thermometer.
In years two through five of the network expansion, our future funding request(s) to SDSRPC will be to add thermometers on approximately 65 more weather stations that are planned to be upgraded or newly installed in the soybean growing region of South Dakota. One primary upgrade involves new towers that increase the height of our upper temperature measurement from 3 meters to 10 meters. This upgrade will begin to bring our inversion measurements in line with heights used for air quality and pesticide drift research, and in coordination with other Mesonet inversion monitoring in the North Central Region states.
The second element of this proposed project is to enhance the online Spray Tool, with the addition of weather forecast information for pesticide applicators. The upgraded Spray Tool will then display not only current and past observations, but also utilize a high-resolution weather forecast model for a prediction of pesticide spray conditions for 48 hours in the future. The predicted variables include: temperature, relative humidity, dew point temperature, Delta-T (wet bulb depressions), wind speed & direction, boom height wind speed, and inversion (experimental mode).