Tier 3 Approved Stations

AgWeatherNet has reached agreements with the following weather station providers to acquire data directly from their cloud service with station owner permission. Click on the links below for approved equipment and associated costs. Brief descriptions of equipment are provided to help growers make decisions, but AgWeatherNet does not guarantee or assume responsibility for any grower equipment purchases. Contact AgWeatherNet (weather@wsu.edu) for additional guidance if needed.

Required:
  • Weather Sensors:
    • Full weather station measuring air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, and precipitation OR
    • Shielded temperature and relative humidity sensor (with leaf wetness, this sufficient for most cold hardiness, crop growth, pest and disease models). Limitation: future inversion monitoring and frost mitigation tools may utilize wind speed measurements.
  • Data logger providing measurements on a 15-minute interval.
  • Annual data service plan with equipment provider.
  • Continuous power supply, usually provided by an integrated solar panel.
Recommended:
  • Leaf wetness (required for most plant disease models).
  • Soil water (matric) potential or volumetric water content
Davis Instruments, a California-based company, has been manufacturing and selling weather stations for over 35 years with over 500,000 stations sold. The Vantage Pro2 station is the highest quality Davis station. The approved AWN station (6334C) includes a daytime aspirated fan to reduce air temperature bias related to shield solar heating.
Davis approved full station:
  • Cabled Vantage Pro2™ ISS with Pyranometer & Daytime Fan-Aspirated Radiation Shield
  • EnviroMonitor Gateway (US, LTE)
  • 15-minute measurement interval
  • 15-minute data plan
Optional:
  • Davis Leaf Wetness Sensor
  • EnviroMonitor Node
(required for additional sensors)
  • METER Soil temperature + water
    • Teros 21 soil water potential
    • Teros 11 soil water content
    • Both measure temperature
 

The METER Group, a Pullman, WA based company founded by WSU Soil Science Professor emeritus Gaylon Campbell, has developed and sold research-grade environmental and food sensors for over 35 years. In 2016, METER commercialized a novel all-in-one, completely enclosed, weather station with no moving parts—the Atmos 41 that AWN utilizes for our Tier 2 network. Air temperature is effectively corrected with an algorithm utilizing other instrument measurements. A tilt sensor monitors the angle of the station relative to horizontal, a key source of station bias.

METER sells a basic, passively shielded temperature and relative humidity sensor, the Atmos 14 which provides a lower cost option for growers not needing wind, solar radiation, or precipitation measurements (primarily needed to compute evapotranspiration and schedule irrigation). The Atmos 14 and 41 can also be used together with one logger, placing the Atmost 41 above the canopy and Atmos 14 within the canopy (contact AWN if interested in this configuration.)

METER approved full station:
  • Atmos 41 all-in-one, weather station
  • ZL6 Datalogger
  • 15-minute measurement interval
  • 15-minute data plan
Optional:
  • Phytos 31 Leaf Wetness
  • Soil temperature + water (METER)
    • Teros 21 soil water potential
    • Teros 11 soil water content (recommended for sand)
    • Both measure temperature
METER approved partial station:
  • Atmos 14 shielded Temp/RH
  • ZL6 Datalogger
  • 15-minute measurement interval
  • 15-minute data plan
Optional:
  • Phytos 31 Leaf Wetness
  • Soil temperature + water (METER)
    • Teros 21 soil water potential
    • Teros 11 soil water content (recommended for sand)
    • Both measure temperature
Washington State University