News

New weather stations help manage apple spraying

Farmers can access weather stations remotely and plan for spraying based on conditions.

By Bill Moss, Published: April 10, 2016

Apple farmers will have a new tool for watching weather conditions and planning for more efficient spraying when the Agriculture Extension Service installs six new weather stations. And they can watch the weather without going outside.

The weather stations are connected through NEWA, the Network for Environment and Weather Applications, which is based at Cornell University and operates in nine states. The stations are made by RainWise Inc.

“These weather stations will give the temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, rainfall, sunlight and it’s sent to this server up in Cornell and then they send back to us the prediction for insect or disease pressure," said Agriculture Extension Director Marvin Owings. “We already had two and we’ve added six to those two. “We had a sponsor that helped pay for half of those six machines, which are about $2,000 apiece.”

The solar powered stations measure temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, leaf wetness, solar radiation, wind speed, wind direction and barometric pressure. Weather data is sent to through the manufacturer's network and immediately transferred to NEWA's server at Cornell.

Farmers using NEWA weather stations say that they can save $19,500 per year on average in spray costs and prevent, $264,000 a year in crop loss by using the system's pest forecast models, the company says.

The new stations are on spread throughout the apple country — in orchards on Bearwallow Road, Ottanola Road, Pilot Mountain Road, Ranch Vista Drive, Chesnut Gap Road and Dana Road.