Eight new stations added to the Enviroweather network

Keith Mason, Michigan State University Enviroweather - May 14, 2019

The new stations are situated in important areas for fruit, vegetable and row crop production in west central Michigan.

New Enviroweather station at Alpine/Comstock Park, Michigan. Photo by MSU Enviroweather.

Michigan State University Enviroweather has added eight new weather stations in the west central region thanks to funding obtained with a Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) Specialty Crop Block Grant through the Michigan Tree Fruit Commission. These recent additions bring the total number of weather stations in the Enviroweather network to 96.

The new stations are situated in important areas for fruit, vegetable and row crop production in west central Michigan, and includes three sites in Oceana County and five along the Fruit Ridge northwest of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The stations are hosted by fruit and vegetable growers, and station sites were chosen to be representative of the landscape of the surrounding locality. Site names and grower hosts are listed in the table below, and the locations are shown in the map below.

Locations and hosts of new Enviroweather stations. All stations are named for the nearest municipality.
Station	County	Host
Aetna / Fremont	Newaygo	Kropscot Farm Environmental Center
Alpine Township / Comstock Park	Kent	Thome Orchards
Conklin / Wright	Ottawa	Dietrich Orchards - Riveridge Produce
Reeman / Fremont-West	Newaygo	Roossinck Fruit Storage and Orchards
Sparta-North	Kent	Goodfellow Orchards
New Era	Oceana	Lewis Farms
Mears	Oceana	Riley Orchards
Shelby-East	Oceana	American Asparagus and Apple Packing

Map of new stations — Map of station locations. Dark circles with labels indicate newly added stations. Light green circles indicate locations of other stations in the region. Red stippling shows areas of tree fruit production.

These stations were installed and connected to the Enviroweather network between December 2018 and May 2019. As some of these stations were installed when the ground was frozen, soil sensors for temperature and moisture still need to be installed at some sites. Nevertheless, these stations are online and are recording air temperature, relative humidity, leaf wetness, solar radiation, wind speed and wind direction, and these data are available to run important early-season crop, pest management and general weather models on Enviroweather.

Many thanks and much appreciation go to the Tree Fruit Commission and our cooperating growers for their work on obtaining the funding and providing sites to make these new stations a reality. Enviroweather sincerely appreciates the continuing support of the Michigan agricultural commodity groups and all of our users.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters. To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).