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Farmers in northwestern Minnesota will have a new tool in their kit for the fall harvest: hyperlocal weather data. 

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is expanding the 

 by adding a weather station west of Viking, Minn., covering Marshall and Pennington counties for the first time. Another station is set to go online later in September, rounding out a statewide network of 58 sites that provide real-time environmental data, including air temperature, rainfall, dew point and soil moisture. The stations also help generate modeling data for crop water use, irrigation schedule recommendations and disease risk forecasts. 

To share more about the Ag Weather Network and the value it brings to farmers and the rest of Minnesota, Ag Department hydrologist and program manager Stefan Bischof joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition. 

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button.

What is the Minnesota Ag Weather Network?

It started off small, but we've been expanding. It is a collection of weather stations placed in agricultural areas across Minnesota, providing information and also helping guide management decisions for farmers to help minimize impacts on water resources. We all know water resources are quite valuable to us in Minnesota, and about three-quarters of Minnesotans rely on groundwater for drinking water. So, this statewide network has some widespread implications. 

Are we talking garden-variety weather stations set up around the state? 

Well, actually, this is research-grade equipment. So we're monitoring weather up to 33 feet in the air, soil conditions down to 7.5 feet below the soil surface, including rain, snow, air temperature, humidity, wind speed, solar radiation, solar temperature and moisture. So these are some pretty intricate weather stations in our network. 

This expansion is a cooperative effort with North Dakota? 

Yes, we partner with the North Dakota Ag Weather Network. They've helped us expand into Minnesota, and it provides us and the public with access to real-time weather information and ag tools. And the weather information that we collect here in Minnesota is accessed through their website, 

. So it's been a great partnership, and it's been worthwhile. 

A $3 million grant to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture in 2023 from the state’s Clean Water Fund allowed the Ag Weather Network to add about 40 weather stations over three years.

Is this weather information fed to the National Weather Service, or do farmers hook into it another way? 

Farmers can hook into it through the website. There are also mobile applications, and all this data is free to the public. The data does go to the National Weather Service. Its benefits extend beyond the farm fields, and so the data goes and is used for emergency service personnel, for forecasting floods, issuing alerts and warnings for severe weather events. 

Is this network becoming more helpful following layoffs at the National Weather Service? 

Yeah. It kind of ended up helping to provide that weather information. It was not necessarily a goal. In the beginning, we just sought to provide the information to farmers, but we do install these weather stations in largely rural Minnesota, which often lacks infrastructure. So this provides the necessary information to smaller communities and builds a more robust dataset in Minnesota for weather conditions. 

When will this new station be up and running near Viking? 

We're on the road right now up to Viking, and we're going to be installing today. It's a two-day install, and hopefully by the end of this week, we'll have it online and providing the data to the public. 

The Ag Department encourages landowners interested in hosting a weather station to 

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To explain what the Ag Weather Network does for farmers and the rest of Minnesota, state Agriculture Department hydrologist and program manager Stefan Bischof joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition. 

Ag Wx Network expansion (Stefan Bischof)

Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture

A man in a blue shirt works on building a weather data station in a farm field.

State expands hyperlocal weather data collection to northwestern Minnesota farmers

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