Oklahoma Mesonet
The Oklahoma Mesonet is a network of environmental monitoring stations designed to measure the environment at the size and duration of mesoscale weather events. The phrase "mesonet" is a portmanteau of the words mesoscale and network. In meteorology, “mesoscale” refers to weather events that range in size from approximately to and can last from several minutes to several hours. Mesoscale events include thunderstorms, wind gusts, heat bursts, and dry lines. Without densely spaced weather observations, these mesoscale events might go undetected. In addition to surface weather observations, Oklahoma Mesonet stations also include environmental data such as insolation and  soil conditions. The network consists of 120 automated stations covering Oklahoma and each of Oklahoma's counties has at least one station. At each site, the environment is measured by a set of instruments located on or near a -tall tower. The measurements are packaged into “observations” and transmitted to a central facility every 5 minutes, 24 hours per day, every day of the year. Oklahoma Mesonet is a cooperative venture between Oklahoma State University (OSU) and the University of Oklahoma (OU) and is supported by the taxpayers of Oklahoma. It is headquartered at the National Weather Center (NWC) on  the OU campus. Observations are available free of charge to the public. Background. According to the "Tulsa World", creation of the Oklahoma Mesonet resulted from the inability of emergency management officials to plan for the May 26–27, 1984 flood that killed 14 people in the Tulsa area. The 1984 flood demonstrated that emergency managers could not receive accurate and adequate data quickly enough about the progress of flooding from airport radars, updated hourly. The University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University collaborated with the Climatological Survey and other public and private agencies to create the Oklahoma Mesonet. This system collects  weather information (e.g., wind speed, rainfall, temperature) every 5 minutes from 121 Mesonet stations throughout Oklahoma. Emergency planners can now monitor up-to-date weather information in advance of the arrival of an approaching storm. The article quoted an official of the Tulsa Area Emergency Management as saying that his staff uses the Oklahoma Mesonet every day. Products. The Oklahoma Mesonet produces many products public use. Every five minutes, maps of all of the meteorological variables are updated to show the latest observations. Users can also look at time series plots of a station (called meteograms) over a given period  of time. Quality assured data files are available to be downloaded. Historical data can be plotted using the Oklahoma Mesonet's Long Term Average tools.