Skip Navigation Linkswww.weather.gov 
NOAA logo - Click to go to the NOAA homepage National Weather Service   NWS logo - Click to go to the NWS homepage    
Western Region Headquarters
navigation bar decoration    
Search Help
Regional Information
 
 
 
Education and Training
 
 
 
USA.gov is the U.S. government's official web portal to all federal, state and local government web resources and services.
Update - 05/20/2008
Meteorological data from over 2800 automated environmental monitoring
stations in the western United States are collected, processed,
archived, integrated, and disseminated as part of the MesoWest program.
MesoWest depends upon voluntary access to provisional observations from
environmental monitoring stations installed and maintained by federal,
state, and local agencies and commercial firms. In many cases,
collection and transmission of these observations are facilitated by NWS
forecast offices, government laboratories, and universities. MesoWest
augments the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) network
maintained by the NWS, Federal Aviation Administration, and Department
of Defense. MesoWest increases the coverage of observations in remote
locations and helps capture many of the local and mesoscale weather
phenomena that impact the public.

The primary goal of MesoWest is to improve timely access to automated
observations for NWS forecasters at offices throughout the western
United States. In addition, integration of the observations into
analyses of surface conditions at high spatial and temporal resolution
provides additional tools for nowcasts and forecast verification.
MesoWest observations are being used for many other applications,
including input to operational and research models and research and
education on weather processes in the western United States.
 _____________________________________________________________________________
Question: I would like to put up an automated weather station and supply data
for my area. What type of stations are most sites using? How do I register a
station with MesoWest once I have it operating and on the internet?

Answer: MesoWest obtains nearly all of our citizen weather observations through
the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) (http://www.wxqa.com/).
We believe their website has information on how to get a system up and
running as well as communicating with the world. These CWOP observations
then get ingested into a system known as Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System, MADIS
(http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/MADIS/index.html) which in turn sends the data
to us here at Mesowest. As such Mesowest does not directly interact with
individual citizen weather stations.
As far as the type of weather stations: There are a range of possibilities
for high quality weather stations. There are some links and ideas if you dig around
on the CWOP page. A few companies you might look at are Davis Instruments, Vaisala,
Cambell Scientific (weatherhawk), lacrosse, and we are sure there are many more.

I hope that this is of some help, regarding Mesowest.

Webmaster
US Dept of Commerce
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Weather Service
Western Region Headquarters
125 South State Street
Salt Lake City, UT 84103

 Disclaimer
Information Quality
Credits
Glossary		 Privacy Policy
Freedom of Information Act
About Us
Career Opportunities