New York State Mesonet (NYSM): The Many Applications and Benefits from a Multiuse Statewide Observing Network

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 and products are made available to a variety of sectors including emergency management, transportation, agriculture, energy and education.

Data collection began 9 August 2015 with the installation of the first Standard station. To address regular requests for archived data, an online “Data Request” page was setup on the NYSM website by May 2016. Since that time over 650+ individual data requests have been received from a wide range of government, academic and private users. For many of these requests the data will provide direct economic benefit through more efficient services. For other requests the data will improve public safety through safer building codes and engineering practices. A large number of requests are simply to satisfy public curiosity. This presentation will explore these data requests as an example of the many applications and benefits that a high-quality, multi-purpose weather station network can provide.

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