Forest County Emergency Management & the City of Crandon Airport partnered with University of Wisconsin to install a high-tech weather station. Wisconsin’s Environmental Mesonet (WiscoNet) Program is supported by a $2.3 million grant from the University of Wisconsin- Madison’s Wisconsin Rural Partnership institute and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. A mesonet is a network of automated environmental monitoring stations to observe meteorological events on the “mesoscale”. In meteorology, “mesoscale” refers to weather events that range in size from about 1 mile to about 150 miles. The weather station will collect data such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall, soil moisture, solar gain, and dew point. Each station is self-sufficient and updates data every 5 minutes. The goal is to have at least one WiscoNet weather station in every county in Wisconsin, currently there are approximately 56. Mesonet data will assist farmers and pilots, support fire weather prediction, assist in emergency planning and preparedness, support k-12 education, and so much more. The two longest running stations in WiscoNet (Arlington Research Station and Hancock Research Station) have provided data since 1985. In the 2010s, eight stations were added to the Door Peninsula to support cherry and apple growers, and in 2021, four stations were installed at University of Wisconsin research stations. See the current data of the Crandon weather station at the link below. https://wisconet.wisc.edu/stations/crandon/index.html
