Last month, as hail and gusting winds with speeds exceeding 50 mph howled through Iowa, residents of Story County were given advance warning of the approaching storm, thanks to the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, an ISU project designed to track weather anomolies.

The mesonet is a collaboration of groups with weather monitoring equipment that covers the central Iowa extended area, said Daryl Herzmann, program assistant in agronomy.

The central Iowa extended area is surrounded on the north by Fort Dodge, the west by Atlantic, the south by Lamoni, and the east by Montezuma.

The large contributors to the mesonet project are KCCI—TV, the National Weather Service, the Iowa Department of Transportation and the ISU agronomy department, according to the Web site, http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu. Other states have begun modeling the public-private collaboration, said John McLaughlin, chief meteorologist at KCCI.

The mesonet is the first system designed at a university to combine with a television station and the National Weather Service, he said.

The difference between the central Iowa mesonet and others is the central Iowa mesonet does not own or operate any automated stations, according to the Iowa Environmental Mesonet Web site. Instead, the mesonet collects and archives data from existing facilities.

Herzmann said other networks in the state provide coverage for the entire state.

There have always been weather monitoring locations around the state, Herzman said, but they have never been connected to be able to collect data and compare it.

“The mesonet allows us to collect all the information under one roof,” Herzmann said.

KCCI assisted Iowa State in purchasing servers to archive the data. KCCI also pays a small monthly fee to maintain the data and has paid roughly $200,000 for the sensor it installed in the SchoolNet, McLaughlin said.

The state of Iowa will get earlier weather warnings and watches from the mesonet, McLaughlin said, because the storm prediction center in Norman, Okla. also uses the mesonet for information about Iowa.

“A thunderstorm may come in but doesn’t look like much on radar,” McLaughlin said. “[The mesonet] warns us if the ground sensors report high winds.”

McLaughlin said about a year ago, 96 mph winds tore through Carroll County and KCCI was able to warn viewers about the “near hurricane-level” winds and instruct them to take shelter.