This project will provide support for weather station technical personnel to maintain and repair sensors, and other tasks such as calibration and replacement of station components. This will free up dollars from other funding sources to meet the project objectives. We aim to use dollars freed up from other funding sources to purchase stations and increase the density of the network.

This project will assist in supporting the 89 automated weather stations that are located throughout the State. Frequent and regular maintenance of this network of stations provides high quality data to producers. Funding from the Commission will partially support the grant funded part time technician maintaining the stations and a part time programmer who is updating the website and developing versions of the website for use on mobile devices. It will also support a web designer to work on creating the new website to be connected to the new database as well as used for new tool development.

The UGA Georgia Weather Network (formerly the Automated Environmental Monitoring Network) is working to achieve the following objectives:
• Expand the network by adding stations in areas that would benefit from a more local weather station. In the past year, we added a station at Grey and replaced Byromville, which was destroyed by a tornado in April 2022. We explored additional sites for new stations near Columbus but have not found a suitable site yet.
• Change the averaging period for data to 5 minute increments, as well as disseminating the data at this frequency. In 2022, we finalized upgrading the modems to handle faster communications to avoid issues with the shut-down of 3G cell phone service in January 2022.
• Move all data handling and archiving operations onto the “cloud” with Amazon Web Services. Restructure the data to be processed and reside in a relational database (presently all data is stored in text files). A database has been created but is awaiting a new webpage to provide better access. The migration to the new site is expected to occur in 2023 due to delays in hiring a web programmer, which we were unable to hire one in 2022 due to limited interest in the position. This will provide even greater reliability as the web site and data availability will no longer be affected by power outages and internet failures on the UGA Griffin campus. A web programmer will be working with the new database to improve the development of crop-specific tools such as a solar radiation tool to accumulate sunshine units. We welcome any suggestions for tools from soybean growers which would further improve their management capabilities.

By adding stations to the network, especially in the more agricultural parts of the State where additional stations would be beneficial, we would increase the number of farmers who could make use of weather data from the network, with economic benefit to those farmers. We aim to use dollars freed up from other funding sources to purchase stations and increase the density of the network.

The density of weather stations means that farmers can usually find more local, and hence more relevant information, than can be obtained through National Weather service weather stations. However, there are still areas in Georgia, even in the more agricultural part of the State where additional stations would be beneficial. By adding stations to the network, we would increase the number of farmers who could make use of weather data from the network, with economic benefit to those farmers.