You may not know the Montana Climate Office, but if you've ever opened your phone's weather app or checked out conditions from the National Weather Service, you’ve used their data.
“We run the largest weather station network in the state of Montana. So we're getting data and every five minutes about precipitation, temperature, rainfall, snowfall, soil, moisture, you name it,” says Kyle Bocinsky, the office's Director of Climate Extension.
Last year the Climate Office added 37 new sensors to its drought monitor network, tying into broader multi-state efforts to track snowpack and soil moisture across the Upper Missouri River Basin.
By 2028 there will be 540 stations across that region, making it one of the densest networks of stations in the world.
“What we can do is use this network as an early warning system to say, are we looking at a situation where our soil moisture is well below normal for this time of year? That may tell us something about how our crops are going to come in or how that forage is going to come in for livestock,” Bocinsky says.
The information is also given to the state and federal government to inform policy decisions and federal assistance for farmers, ranchers and businesses impacted by drought.
The monitor data is publicly available through the Climate Office’s site
Bocinsky says this year, in addition to the new monitors, he’s excited about new agricultural tools that can show producers things like measurements of the amount of heat that helps plants grow, or looking at where extreme temperatures could impact the health of livestock.
