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When 'Partly Sunny' Isn't Good Enough
When ‘Partly Sunny’ Isn’t Good Enough
By
Carol
Spence
LEXINGTON, Ky., (Sept. 6, 2006) – “Make hay while the sun
shines” may be a good metaphor and a valuable life lesson, but
for the people who really do “make” hay, it takes more than a
forecast for sunny skies to make the proper plans. That’s where
the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture’s weather
service comes in.
Tom Priddy, UK meteorologist, says that there is a lot of
weather information that farmers need, and “partly sunny with a
20 percent chance of showers just does not cut it.” So Priddy
and his staff are devising new methods to get the right
information out at the right time to the people who can use it.
That information includes a county-by-county agricultural
weather forecast.
“Farmers need to know how many hours the relative humidity is
going to be above a certain number, below a certain number,” he
said. “How many hours is it going to rain today, and what are
the most likely rainfall amounts that are going to occur in
(their county)? Can I spray today? How many hours will there be
good spraying conditions? How much evaporative loss are we going
to have today in our county? So there’s a whole array of
questions that farmers have to address.”
Priddy says he and his staff at the UK Agricultural Weather
Center work to answer those types of questions. They take
products provided by the National Weather Service and develop
new agricultural weather services that could make life on the
farm a little more predictable and successful. When a farmer
uses the information and tailors it to his own needs, it’s hoped
that it will result in larger yields.
All 120 county Extension offices have a link to a
county-by-county forecast on their Web sites. Or access is
available at http://wwwagwx.ca.uky.edu. Detailed forecasts and
information concerning droughts, climate summaries, evaporative
rates, precipitation reports, and precision agricultural, lawn
and garden forecasts are presented as weather maps, charts,
plain text, or MP3 files.
Recently a county-by-county severe weather alert has been added
to the system. The idea was simple, said Priddy.
“Could we tie together the Storm Prediction Center’s severe
weather products and the new National Weather Service Doppler
radar severe weather capabilities, which include more than 130
radars?” he said.
The new NWS radar images now have severe thunderstorm warnings,
tornado warnings and flood warnings on the radar images. All of
this is accessible nationwide via the Internet. Computer users
should go to
http://wwwagwx.ca.uky.edu/radar/Severeweather.html for
severe weather information. PDA users can access the information
by going to
http://wwwagwx.ca.uky.edu/pda.shtml.
The county-by-county weather information is not restricted to
Kentucky counties, but is available for all 3,350 counties in
the United States.
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Contact: Tom Priddy, 859-257-3000, ext. 245 |
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The UK College
of Agriculture, through its land-grant mission, reaches across
the commonwealth with Teaching, Research and Extension
to enhance the lives of Kentuckians. |
Questions/Comments,
e-mail the
webmaster
Copyright © 2001-2006 University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture,
Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service |
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