Patent ID: 7403840

Claim:
A method of broadcasting region specific weather data to two or more controller interfaces residing in distinct weather regions, each controller interface in communication with a radio-frequency receiver, said method comprising the steps of: assigning a weather region identifier for each distinct weather region; configuring each controller interface to only process broadcasts for the weather region in which it resides; collecting weather data for one of the distinct weather regions, said weather data selected from the group consisting essentially of wind speed data, temperature data, solar radiation data, humidity data, and rainfall data; transmitting to a commercial paging service the weather data and the weather region identifier for the weather region for which the weather data pertains; receiving the weather data and weather region identifier at at least one of the two or more controller interfaces via their respective radio-frequency receivers; processing the weather data if the controller interface resides in the weather region to which the weather data pertains, said processing including calculating evapotranspiration, wherein said calculated evapotranspiration is based solely upon up-to-date weather data; and outputting a control signal from the controller interface residing in the weather region to which the weather data pertains to an irrigation controller to improve irrigation.