New Ohio Mesonet expands weather data access, boosts agricultural resilience

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When the weather turns, farmers aren't the only ones who need to know what's happening on the ground.

In some of Ohio's most rural counties - especially across the northwest, northeast and southeast - radar and satellite tools often scan too high or too far to detect what matters most: soil moisture at the root zone, wind gusts at field level or storms forming just above the tree line.

These regions also tend to have the weakest radar coverage, leaving dangerous gaps in the state's ability to monitor flash flooding, damaging winds and fast-developing severe storms. Without localized data, farmers and emergency managers are forced to make critical decisions with limited information - putting crop yields and public safety at risk.

A new statewide network led by the State Climate Office of Ohio and The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) aims to close those gaps.

The Ohio Mesonet network deploys advanced real-time weather stations across Ohio, providing highly localized data that can help farmers optimize their operations and let safety officials issue earlier, more accurate severe weather warnings.

"Weather remains the single most influential factor in crop yield, yet parts of Ohio still lack adequate weather monitoring," said Aaron Wilson, climate specialist with CFAES. "That lack of information introduces risk - and in farming, risk is everything."

Wilson is leading the development of the Ohio Mesonet, a new statewide network of automated research-grade weather stations aimed at closing those gaps. Built in collaboration with CFAES, the Ohio Soybean Council, weatherUSA and other partners, the Ohio Mesonet is designed to provide real-time, highly localized data on a wide range of weather and soil conditions.

As one of the network's earliest supporters, the Ohio Soybean Council sees the Mesonet as a critical tool for improving daily and seasonal decision-making on Ohio farms.

"Weather information is valuable to Ohio's soybean farmers, both in the short term and the long term," said Tom Fontana, director of research and education for the Ohio Soybean Council. "This is true for farmers scheduling planting, harvesting and delivering important inputs to a growing crop such as fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and other crop protection products."

Ohio State University Extension, CFAES' outreach arm, plays a key role in ensuring that data from the network reaches farmers and local decision-makers across Ohio.

The first 10 stations are being deployed across key agricultural regions. Over time, the goal is to expand to all 88 counties.

The Ohio Mesonet's stations will monitor variables including air and soil temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, rainfall, and soil moisture. In addition to these core measurements, the stations also incorporate sensors for leaf wetness and multiple levels of relative humidity and temperature - tools that provide valuable insights for disease forecasting and spray management.

"Mesonet stations are designed with multiple levels of temperature and relative humidity data that provide temperature inversion potential, which is directly beneficial for farmers as they try to avoid spray applications during high-drift risk periods," Wilson said. "Instruments like leaf wetness sensors can provide data on duration of moisture present on leaves that is part of the risk from an array of pathogens and disease potential."

This kind of hyperlocal data helps farmers manage risk more precisely, especially when it comes to timing pesticide applications, predicting disease and pest pressure, and adjusting to rapidly changing weather conditions.

Beyond immediate decision-making, the Ohio Mesonet also holds long-term value. As the network grows, it will begin to offer datasets that support trend analysis and long-range planning.

"Long-term, a dense network can begin to provide data on trends over time," Wilson said. "For instance, the Oklahoma Mesonet is 30 years old - the typical period of time the National Weather Service uses to establish 'expected' conditions or climate normal."

One of the most significant advantages of the Ohio Mesonet is its ability to calibrate and validate broader weather tools like satellite products and radar. In many areas, radar stations are simply too far away to sample conditions near the surface.

"A denser network of surface stations provides opportunities to better calibrate remote-sensing platforms like satellite data and radar," Wilson said. "Actual soil moisture observations provided by mesonets improve these products and provide more confidence in the products when using them to assess hazards like drought."

The Ohio Mesonet's benefits go beyond agriculture.

Accurate surface-level observations also help the National Weather Service detect fine-scale weather phenomena such as flash flooding, damaging wind gusts and severe thunderstorms.

"These observations could lead to more accurate and earlier warnings for severe weather events," Wilson said, "saving the general public and specific farmers improved property damage and/or loss of life."

Development of the Ohio Mesonet has been structured with long-term integration in mind. Wilson noted that the project began after CFAES received a private donation from weatherUSA. That's when CFAES quickly matched the donation with internal support. Additional partners including the Ohio Soybean Council, Nationwide and Ohio Farm Bureau have since joined the effort.

For the Ohio Soybean Council, supporting the Ohio Mesonet was a natural extension of its commitment to advancing science and technology, which directly benefit farmers.

"The state of Ohio was in need of a more robust and technologically advanced weather information system, and the Ohio Soybean Council was pleased to support this effort," Fontana said. "As the network continues to expand, we need to make certain to communicate the value it provides to our soybean farmers in Ohio."

That kind of stakeholder engagement has helped fuel the vision for a broader statewide network, modeled after successful efforts in other states.

"There are great state examples in places like Kentucky, Wisconsin and Maryland, who have dozens of stations across their states," Wilson said. "There are others as well, where public dollars, local interest and financial support have come together to forge great partnerships to build and expand their mesonets across their respective states.

"I am encouraged that we can do the same here in Ohio."