Kentucky Mesonet At Western Kentucky University Dedicates Ballard County Site

Paducah KY

12 May, 2022

2:54 PM

Description

Press release from Western Kentucky University: May 10, 2022 The Kentucky Mesonet at WKU dedicated a new station Monday in Ballard County. The station is located 5 miles northeast of La Center near Bandana on property owned by Benny and Terre Cooper. Participants in Monday's ribbon cutting were Steve Eddy, National Weather Service Paducah; Andrew Quilligan, Kentucky Mesonet; Dr. Cathleen Webb, WKU's Ogden College of Science and Engineering; John Gordon, National Weather Service Louisville/Kentucky Mesonet Advisory Board; Steven Rudy, State Representative; Megan Schargorodski, Kentucky Mesonet; Dr. David Brown, WKU's Ogden College of Science and Engineering; Terre Cooper, Landowner; Eddie Melton, Kentucky Farm Bureau/Kentucky Mesonet Advisory Board; Stuart Foster, retired Director of Kentucky Mesonet/Kentucky Mesonet Advisory Board; and Todd Cooper, Ballard County Judge-Executive. "The station represents a beautiful partnership between many people," said Schargorodski, Interim Director of the Kentucky Mesonet at WKU and Kentucky Climate Center. "This area of the state is significantly underserved with regard to weather data. Having these data points from Ballard County will aid the National Weather Service with forecasting and warnings, as well as provide a high-quality reference dataset for agriculture interests in the county. The addition of the Ballard County station moves the network toward its goal of one station per county." The Kentucky Mesonet at WKU, the Commonwealth's official source for weather and climate data, has 76 stations in 71 counties. The Ballard County station is the fifth located in the Jackson Purchase region of western Kentucky. The Mesonet stations collect real-time data on air temperature, precipitation, humidity, barometric pressure, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, soil moisture and soil temperature and transmit it to the Kentucky Mesonet at WKU Operations Center (housed at WKU's Center for Research and Development) every five minutes, 24 hours per day, throughout the year. The data is available online at www.kymesonet.org. "The Ballard County station has the standard Kentucky Mesonet instrumentation suite and is also outfitted with multi-level temperature and wind and a webcam. A unique feature of this station is two soil probe pits for the advancement of soil research with the University of Kentucky," Schargorodski said. This press release was produced by Western Kentucky University. The views expressed here are the author's own.