New climate resources available

With hopefully most of the cool temperatures behind us, now is the time to be checking plants for any sustained frost damage. When anticipating cold temperatures, many resources exist to evaluate the amount and area of cold expected.

Weather and climate resources may be difficult to interpret once found. A lot of tabular data exists that may look better graphically, or a lot of graphics may have too much overlaid information to interpret easily.

The Indiana State Climate Office (IN-SCO) has a new website, found at www.ag.purdue.edu/Indiana-state-climate. Our state climatologist, Dr. Beth Hall, now has over a year of experience in her position and continues to improve weather and climate monitoring resources in Indiana. Most of these resources can be found at the website.

Perhaps the most important resource that the IN-SCO controls is the Purdue Mesonet. A mesonet is a mesoscale network of weather stations. The mesoscale is a relatively small scale, meteorologically speaking, with multiple stations covering a defined area, anywhere from a few stations per state, to a station per county, to even multiple stations per county.

The Purdue Mesonet contains nine Purdue farm-based stations around the state supported by the IN-SCO. In addition, the National Weather Service (NWS) maintains 49 Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) stations, usually located at airports around the state.

The Indiana Water Balance Network (IWBN), maintained by the Indiana Geological and Water Survey at Indiana University, has 13 sites around the state, with more on the way. These network stations are all installed and maintained to NWS specifications, which separates them from the backyard weather station that can upload information to private, online weather services.

Data from the mesonets are maintained separately, but NWS and Purdue farm data are accessible through the IN-SCO website. The advantage of the Purdue farm and IWBN mesonet data is the availability of variables such as wind, soil temperature, humidity and solar radiation, variables less common from other weather station networks.

In addition to near real-time weather data provided by the Purdue Mesonet, the IN-SCO provides regularly updated maps of the state for recent time periods depicting rainfall and temperature amounts, averages and deviations from the climatological normal. In addition, a “tools” tab leads to Midwest Regional Climate Center products focused around drought, agriculture, winter or the Great Lakes.

Using this tab also provides some projects the IN-SCO has developed recently.

For instance, after a period of more than seven days above 35 degrees Fahrenheit, the Evansville Museum station has never recorded a cold snap with a resultant temperature below 18 degrees. The average first fall freeze in Indianapolis occurs on Nov. 3, although the trend-line first freeze is predicting (with very low confidence) closer to Nov. 8. Since 1950, Indiana has experienced four F5/EF5 tornadoes, the strongest tornado that exists. All four occurred in 1974.

If anyone would be looking for specific weather or climate data and cannot find it readily, the site has a link to request data from the State Climate Office. These requests, if possible, should be restricted to weather and climate data requests.

Visit www.extension.purdue.edu/putnam or contact the local Purdue Extension office by calling 653-8411 for more information regarding this week’s column topic or to RSVP for upcoming events. It is always best to call first to assure items are ready when you arrive and to RSVP for programs.

While many publications are free, some do have a fee.

Upcoming Events:

April 30 – Gardening Tips for Everyone – The 411 on Warm Season Crops, 1 p.m., register at https://tinyurl.com/garden4everyone

April 30 – Food Budgeting and Meal Planning, 2 p.m., view live at https://purdueextension.zoom.us/j/97621292635

May 7 – Gardening Tips for Everyone – Gardening for Pollinators, 1 p.m., register at https://tinyurl.com/garden4everyone

May 14 – Gardening Tips for Everyone – Disease Scouting & Control, 1 p.m., register at https://tinyurl.com/garden4everyone

May 21 – Best Practices for Backyard Chickens – What Bird is Right for Me?, 1 p.m., register at https://tinyurl.com/bestchickens

May 22 – Making the Cut – Meat Masters webinar, 12 p.m., register at https://tinyurl.com/y83ma4k4

May 28 – Best Practices for Backyard Chickens – Preventative Measures for a Happy, Healthy Bird, 1 p.m., register at https://tinyurl.com/bestchickens

June 4 – Best Practices for Backyard Chickens – Keeping Your Birds Safe, 1 p.m., register at https://tinyurl.com/bestchickens