Two Years of Hydrometeorological Data from the New York State Mesonet (NYSM)

The New York State Mesonet (NYSM) is designed to collect high-resolution, high-quality weather observations at the mesoscale, capturing weather phenomena typically 10 km or greater in horizontal scale. The Mesonet is comprised of 180 sites across four networks: (i) 126 “Standard” weather stations; (ii) 17 “Profiler” sites with additional vertical sensing capacity; (iii) 17 “Flux” sites with energy budget sensors; and (iv) 20 “Snow” sites. The Standard network of 126 weather stations provides the backbone of the Mesonet infrastructure; each station is spaced an average 30 km apart and samples measurements every 5 minutes. All data are relayed to the University at Albany via cellular and satellite communications where the data are quality-controlled, archived, and disseminated in real-time.

Data collection began 9 August 2015 with installation of the first Standard station and continues through the present. To date, well over 250 million observations have been collected, quality-controlled, and archived. Data and products are made available to a variety of sectors including emergency management, transportation, agriculture, energy and education.

The NYSM was funded by FEMA for emergency management monitoring and response, and as a result the network was purposely designed to monitor hydrometeorological variables. In particular, the NYSM measures temperature and relative humidity; precipitation (rain and snow) totals and intensity; snow depth; and soil temperature and moisture (5, 25, and 50 cm) at all 126 Standard stations. In addition, the 17 Flux stations monitor radiation and fluxes including latent heat flux, and the 20 Snow sites estimate snow water equivalent every 6 hours. This presentation reviews the challenges associated with operating the hydrometeorological sensors and explores a 2+ year climatology of hydrometeorological variables collected by the network.

Figures: Statewide map of sites (left). A Standard NYSM station located at Belden (right).