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Kentucky Mesonet Develops App Useful to Farmers

Kentucky Mesonet via Facebook

Kentucky’s statewide weather and climate monitoring network now has an app that’s especially useful for farmers. 

Kentucky Mesonet has 70 locations across the state that provide data including temperature, rainfall, humidity, dew point and solar radiation. Those details have been on the Mesonet website, but now they’re on an app for smartphones or other mobile devices that use iOS or Android operating systems.

Megan Schargorodski is the manager of Kentucky Mesonet and said farmers are the main reason the app was developed. She said many tractors are equipped with tablets, so the Mesonet app makes the data readily available to farmers.

“They also look at the wind speed, probably most of all because they either spray or they irrigate and you can only do those under certain conditions," said Schargorodski. "It can’t be too windy and it can’t be too calm.”

The app also has the time of sunrise and sunset, as well as information from the National Weather Service. 

Kentucky Mesonet is based at Western Kentucky University.

Credit Kentucky Mesonet
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Kentucky Mesonet
Kentucky Mesonet app for iOS and Android systems.

Rhonda Miller began as reporter and host for All Things Considered on WKU Public Radio in 2015. She has worked as Gulf Coast reporter for Mississippi Public Broadcasting, where she won Associated Press, Edward R. Murrow and Green Eyeshade awards for stories on dead sea turtles, health and legal issues arising from the 2010 BP oil spill and homeless veterans.
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