Working in partnership with the Canadian Wheat Board, weather information service WeatherBug plans to develop a new online weather centre available free to Prairie farmers.
The U.S. company plans to top that offering with an advanced detection and alert system for severe weather such as lightning strikes, downburst winds and tornadoes.
The CWB and Maryland-based WeatherBug two years ago launched what’s become a major private weather network that connects 700 monitoring stations on farms, at grain elevators and other sites across the Prairies, with support from corporate partners such as Richardson Pioneer and Bayer CropScience.
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“Farmers and the agriculture industry have worked together to build a weather solution for ourselves,” CWB CEO Ian White said in a release Wednesday. “As we continue to forge partnerships across our sector and beyond, the possibilities become very exciting for everyone who depends on weather data.”
The CWB and WeatherBug Professional on Wednesday launched the free online weather centre, dubbed WeatherFarm. The company said the service will include mapping and modelling tools that farmers can use to help manage pests, increase the efficiency of herbicides and pesticides and improve farm management practices.
“Additional agronomic support tools will be added on an ongoing basis, in response to needs identified by producers and agribusiness,” the CWB and WeatherBug said.
WeatherFarm would gather its data from the current WeatherBug network’s 700 web-linked field stations, and from other publicly available weather data, such as Environment Canada’s stations. “Farmers need this kind of service and, as their marketing organization, we can help provide it,” the CWB’s White said.
The new WeatherBug Total Lightning Network, meanwhile, is expected to detect cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning activity.
“Using a broad frequency range and high sampling rate, our lightning detection is more efficient, with better location accuracy,” WeatherBug president and CEO Bob Marshall said in the same release. “This enables early warning for many types of severe weather.”
The WeatherBug network’s on-farm Prairie stations are solar-powered and wireless, feeding information to an IP data logger on wind, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, precipitation and rates of change.
Sensors for factors such as soil temperature and moisture, leaf wetness, UV and solar energy can also be added to the on-farm stations. Commercial-grade units are available that can connect to cameras and lightning detectors.
