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Weather connection website offers long-term weather perspectives
Texas
Is it snowing in Amarillo? Blowing dust in Lubbock? Parched in Fort Stockton? Raining on South Padre?
On any given day, the answer is probably--maybe. That's why we double-check the Weather Channel before we travel in Texas... We have to second-guess the meteorologists to really be prepared.
But where do Texans turn for a longer-term perspective on the state's ever-changing climate?
The Texas Weather Connection, a website of the Spatial Sciences Laboratory in College Station, provides real-time climatological data on drought, rainfall, soil moisture and vegetative greenery statewide.
"We have been online for a year," said Dr. Raghavan Srinivasan, associate professor of forest science and director of the lab. "The Texas Water Resources Institute provided the seed money necessary to initially make our climatological tools available online. It took us about two years to develop a means to make these tools available to the public through an automated website."
The site is a collection of weather-reporting tools derived from data gathered through satellite remote sensing, geographic information system, global positioning system and Internet mapping technologies. Web surfers who visit http://twc.tamu.edu can find:
--Daily and cumulative rainfall totals from the National Weather Service Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD);
--The latest temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, dew point, wind and precipitation information from 77 weather stations across the state, as well as the North Plains Weather Network, a cooperative effort of The Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Extension centers in Lubbock and Amarillo;
--Interactive maps of the Real-Time Vegetation Monitoring System developed at the Blackland Research and Extension Center in Temple, the latest NEXRAD radar data, the Keetch-Byram Drought Index; and
--The latest Texas Fire Danger Map based on fuels, weather and topographical data generated from automated weather stations that are part of the National Fire Danger Rating System and Weather Information Management System.
The Texas Forest Service uses the site to monitor drought and assess fire danger in all 254 counties.
Robert Whitney, Texas Cooperative Extension agent in Comanche County, uses the website to help dairy producers in his county track rainfall events and runoff.
"For environmental purposes, large livestock operations are required to manage all the manure they generate, and that can be quite a chore," Whitney said. "Properly maintaining and managing a manure treatment lagoon system to keep runoff out of the local watersheds is very important to our dairymen and the Environmental Protection Agency.
"We use TWC to track and record actual rainfall that will affect our runoff. It's also valuable for crop producers because we can track rainfall patterns each year, and then over time we can develop crop rotation sequences that fit well in those patterns."
County agents and Extension specialists elsewhere in Texas are using TWC data to generate accurate computerized crop production models using CroPMan software (a crop and production management model).
"CroPMan allows us to simulate a growing year on the computer. We use TWC daily weather data to generate accurate climatic models," said Tom Gerik, professor of crop physiology and production with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at the Blackland Research and Extension Center. "We can monitor weather data at different weather stations statewide, download and update our weather data profiles, and then use CroPMan to generate real-time crop simulations, or to make management projections.
"We are currently testing and evaluating CroPMan's usefulness at several locations across Texas. The ultimate goal is to evaluate current production methods compared to the best management practices that CroPMan may generate. This will help farmers minimize the production risk inherent in dryland crop production."
Other interactive tools are being developed through ongoing research, Srinivasan noted.
"In the future, users will be able to find interactive maps for potential evapotranspiration (PET), soil moisture and runoff," he said.
"You will be able to select a county from a Texas map and learn how much irrigation is necessary to supplement known rainfall, how much moisture is stored in the soil profile, or how much runoff to expect from different rainfall events.
"These products will provide information useful for agriculture, flood mitigation, water allocation from reservoirs, as well as watershed and water resource management practices."
Date: 4/1/04
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