The Indiana Mesonet

The INDIANA MESONET

With the Director of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' approval, the project to install an automated weather observing site at every Indiana State Park started this summer. While the first site is under construction at Versailles State Park, various computing programming and instrumentation research is being conducted at the University of Oklahoma. Until www.versaillesstatepark.com is publicly released, all Indiana Mesonet information will be limited.

The Indiana Mesonet will consist of a mesosnetwork of automated weather observing sites. Each site will consist of a suite of instrumentation that will measure various parameters of the surface-based atmosphere. Temperature, dewpoint, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, wind direction, ground moisture, precipitation, electrical conductivity, and other valuable measurements will be included in a typical site. The site is composed of a 30'x30' enclosed area with a central 10 meter tower. The tower will host the instruments that will be powered by solar panels and will transmit data strings to a central computing system every 5 - 15 minutes.

The instruments used in the Indiana Mesonet will replicate the instruments used in the Oklahoma Mesonet. The Oklahoma Mesonet, owned and operated by the University of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, is a world-class outfit that has defined the standard for regional and mesoscale meteorological measurement networks. Below are pictures taken of instruments at a typical Oklahoma Mesonet site.