A web application for managing regional crop production: The West Texas Mesonet agro-climate monitor

Although dependent on rainfall and other climate factors to produce crops, West Texas crop consultants, extension agents, and agricultural producers have few tools that allow them to track the current growing season’s climate conditions and determine how current conditions compare with those of past years. The West Texas Mesonet Agro-Climate Monitor (ACM), a JavaScript web application based on daily data from Texas Tech University’s mesonet weather station network, was designed to meet this need. By displaying continuously updated information on variables such as soil temperature, cumulative growing degree days (GDD), cumulative precipitation, and first freeze dates, the ACM allows producers to monitor planting conditions, track crop development, and compare current conditions with those during the previous 10 yr’s growing seasons. In illustrating how mesonet data might be used as an operational climate data resource, the ACM might also serve as a conceptual model for other high resolution climate tools that estimate measures of current climate using continuously updated daily data sets.