The National Weather Service provides a lot of weather and climate observations across the United States and has done so for well over 100 years. But their network is limited in what it measures, focusing mainly on temperature and precipitation, plus wind, humidity, and pressure at airport locations where that information is needed for flight operations. The low density of stations means that many extreme events are missed and that reduces the accuracy of forecasts and severe weather warnings. Many states, including Georgia (the one I manage), Florida, Alabama, and North Carolina, have built their own mesonets of higher-density weather stations to supplement the NWS observations. Since many of those are agricultural networks, they also add additional measurements like soil temperature and moisture and solar radiation that are important for crop modeling and decision support. This week National Public Radio had a short segment on these mesonets and how states are building them. You can list to the 3-minute audio recording at https://www.npr.org/2022/03/15/1086605663/many-states-are-setting-up-their-own-extensive-weather-monitoring-networks. You can see a map that shows where many of the mesonets are operating at the National Soil Moisture Network at National Soil Moisture Network, although there are some additional mesonets like the ones in Michigan and Minnesota that are not included in this map.
