The network has slowly expanded from three stations in 1991 to 39 weather stations in 1999. Weather stations are located at many sites across the state. These include several golf courses, two nurseries, several farms, Fort Valley State University, Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, and two USDA-ARS labs. The weather station has a small data logger that has memory and can be programmed to gather and store weather data. A battery is used to power the system and during the daytime a solar panel recharges the battery.
Some stations also monitor pan evaporation, soil moisture, and leaf wetness.
The data logger is programmed to collect the data from each sensor every second and the data are summarized at 15- minute intervals. At midnight, the daily totals as well as daily maximum, minimum and average values are calculated. Communication with these weather stations is critical. Each station has a dedicated telephone line and modem to download the weather data. In our laboratory in Griffin, we maintain several personal computers that operate 24 hours per day, seven days per week, to download and process the weather data from the weather stations.