This summer, the Northwest Research and Outreach Center (NWROC) in Crookston installed a new weather station in partnership with Minnesota Agricultural Weather Network (MAWN) and North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network (NDAWN) which led to the modernization of reported weather data on NWROC’s website. Staff from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) and NDAWN installed the weather station in late July and the station was active in early August.
The weather station is located on NWROC’s north farm on the west side of Hwy 75 N outside of Crookston (latitude/longitude 47° 49’ 23.7” N by 96° 37’ 13.6518” W.) Weather data is available at nwroc.umn.edu/weather and includes the current air temperature, relative humidity, wind direction and speed, current rainfall total, and more.
“Having such an advanced weather system in the Crookston area will be beneficial not only to the NWROC operations and the important research that we do, it is a huge benefit to the Crookston community, the producers in the area, as well as KROX and the U of M Crookston,” said Maureen Aubol, director of operations at the NWROC. “Farmers and local residents have access to real time weather information and NWROC’s faculty utilize this weather data in their research and publications. This record is an invaluable resource for climate scientists and researchers as they study the changing climate of Minnesota.”
The NWROC, which is one of the oldest land-grant experiment stations in Minnesota and was established in 1895, joined several other ROCs in partnering with the MDA to join and collect data for the Minnesota Ag Weather Network. This project upgrades the ROCs’ current weather stations with advanced technology that is standardized across the MDA’s network and provides current weather updates every 15 minutes.The weather data that NWROC has historically kept for almost 140 years will be kept on file.
