A new tool for tracking weather, heat units, and crop progress

I needed a quick way to view and download weather data from several counties, to determine accumulated heat units for many different planting dates and crops, and to compare against the 30-yr averages for making predictions and crop management decisions. So, I developed a web-based tool with that express purpose. Just point your browser or click-on http://weather.utcrops.com and the rest should be self-explanatory. There is also a Quick Link to this site on the left menu. If you are only interested in counties in Tennessee, you can click on the following instead: http://weather.utcrops.com/index.php?stateFp=47

A couple notes … This tool accesses data from the selected NOAA weather station from the Global Historical Climate Network. Since weather data is still recorded manually at most of these weather stations, it is often delayed by a couple days (especially on week-ends). Also, weather data may be incomplete for some stations. So, check the “Data Coverage” column in the list of stations and select a station with the highest percent coverage. If your county does not have a NOAA weather station, try a neighboring county. Keep in mind that this tool relies on communication with NOAA servers to obtain updates. NOAA servers may go down periodically for maintenance or during government shutdowns, etc.

I hope you find this tool useful in making crop management decisions or for general record keeping. If you find any bugs, please save a copy of your browser’s webpage and send me an email including the web address, the webpage as an attachment, and a brief description of the problem.  Also, feel free to send me a note if you have suggestions for improvement.