| [Image: The portable weather station at NO Airport] |
| [Image: Weather station tower being errected] |
| [Image: Prototype portable weather station] |
The LSU AgCenter Louisiana Agriclimatic Information System (LAIS) was asked to deploy its portable weather station to New Orleans International Airport by the State OEP/FAA September 3 to provide weather data to the N.O. airport control tower.
The NWS automated station was out of commission and the tower was without reliable direct weather data. Absence of weather data made airport operations even more hazardous than they already were. AgCenter employees Royce Fontenot, Jeremy Birch and Jay Grymes erected the station on the north side of the airport. They then installed a radio system to deliver the data directly back to the control tower.
For at least a day, and possibly longer, the LAIS data was the only direct source of weather data for the control tower. As of September 7, the system was still in use. Thousands using the airplanes and the large number of helicopters flying into and out of the airport on rescue and support missions, including the president of the United States, benefited from the AgCenter weather data.
This is the first disaster-related deployment of the portable weather station that was designed and built especially for this kind of situation. The station was constructed using funds provided by a Louisiana Board of Regents Enhancement 2003-2005 grant titled “Rapid Response and Reliability for the Louisiana Agriclimatic Information System.” Previously the station had been tested at the AgCenter's St. Gabriel Research Station during sugarcane burning operations in December 2004 and at the Ben Hur Research Station next to the LSU Fire and Emergency Training Institute. The operation of the portable station was also demonstrated at the Sugarcane Field Day in St. Martin Parish in July.
The LAIS is a network of 25 electronic weather stations established in 1982 to provide agricultural researchers and producers with weather data. The system now provides information for a wider set of clientele. Each weather station observes air temperature, precipitation, wind speed and direction, total shortwave and photosynthetically active radiation, soil temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure. Data are recorded at least every five minutes, and hourly and daily summaries are generated.
Raw data, tabular and graphical reports are available on the Internet at http://www.AgCenterenter.com/weather/ . Although Katrina damaged some of the stations, in many cases, the weather data are available within minutes after the observations are recorded. The current mission of the LAIS is to collect, process and distribute detailed meteorological data relevant to agricultural production, natural resource management, environmental protection and public safety.
Using the Board of Regents' grant, LAIS was enhanced in terms of its potential for rapid response and reliability. This was achieved by using four strategies.
First, key stations were or are being equipped with uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). Second, existing stations have been provided with back-up sensors for key meteorological variables. Most stations have also received re-calibrated data loggers. Third, a portable LAIS weather station, described above, and satellite stations that collect a more limited suite of weather variable data, have been constructed, tested and are ready for deployment. One satellite station was already deployed near Monterey, La., to monitor this summer’s drought. The main portable station can be assembled in less than an hour. Fourth, the central computer server of the system was upgraded.