Weather Stations for Pest and Disease Monitoring

Does anybody have experience with weather monitoring equipment? I am looking to track degree growing days, leaf wetness etc. for disease and pest models for an IPM approach to holistic orchard management. What brands and models do you have? Pluses and minuses you have seen?

Thanks

Russ Martin
Zone 4b Extreme west Central Wisconsin Hager City, WI



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2017 01:49PM by Michael Phillips.

I only recommend the Rainwise weather stations so they can interface with Cornell's NEWA system. They are more expensive ($2000) but allow your system to be plugged into a broad network and run your weather data on the standard insect and disease models. There are others, but not as functional (IMHO).

Mike Biltonen, Know Your Roots
Zone 5b in New York

Hi Mike,

Thank you for the suggestion. I had not looked at that system. I did spend some time on line.at the site. Seems like the big push is to put my weather data on Weather Underground. I did not see any tools for taking my data and projecting apple scab, Codling moth etc. development for my orchard. I want it to load automatically to my computer and generate the risk graphs. Perhaps the website does this for me? Will this system do that? How do you use your personal weather data?

Thanks!

Russ Martin
Zone 4b Extreme west Central Wisconsin Hager City, WI

If you sign up for Rainwise Premium then you have instant access to the weather data and various graphs and tables - that will load more or less automatically - you will have to sign in and then select the parameters for the various reports. The NEWA interface is all online and nothing is automatic per se, though the weather station and NEWA update every hour. As far as the insect and disease models, you have to run those. Some are based on weather others on tree phenology. There are no downloadable reports from NEWA, as far as I know, so you'd have to take screen shots in order to have a paper copy. As far as I can tell, it is the most powerful weather station, predictive service interface I know of for the northeast.

Mike Biltonen, Know Your Roots
Zone 5b in New York