This data set only contains information about the Mesonet locations, it does not contain environmental information that has been collected at the sites. Mesonet data products can be accessed at <http://www.mesonet.ou.edu/public/>
The Oklahoma Mesonet consists of over 110 automated stations covering Oklahoma. There is at least one Mesonet station in each of the 77 counties in Oklahoma..
At each site, the environment is measured by a set of instruments located on or near a 10-meter-tall tower. The measurements are packaged into "observations" every 5 minutes, then the observations are transmitted to a central facility every 5 minutes, 24 hours per day year-round.
The Oklahoma Climatological Survey at OU receives the observations, verifies the quality of the data and provides the data to Mesonet customers. It only takes 5 to 10 minutes from the time the measurements are acquired until available to the public.
Certain instruments are located at every Mesonet site to measure the standard-primary variables. These variables are as follows: air temperature measured at 1.5 meters above the ground surface, relative humidity measured at 1.5 meters above the ground surface, wind speed and direction measured at 10 meters above the ground surface, barometric pressure, rainfall, incoming solar radiation, and soil temperatures at 10 centimeters below the ground surface under both the natural sod cover and bare soil. Additional instruments are placed at most sites to measure standard-secondary variables. These include the following:
air temperature at 9 meters above the ground surface, wind speed at 2 and 9 meters above the ground surface, soil moisture at 5, 25, and, 60 centimeters below the ground surface, soil temperatures at 5 and 30 centimeters below the ground surface under the natural sod cover, and soil temperature at 5 centimeters below the bare ground surface. All above-ground surface measurements are sampled every 3 seconds and with the exception of the barometer (which is 12 seconds) and the rain gauge (which is event driven). The above ground measurements are averaged over 5 minutes. Soil temperature measurements are sampled every 30 seconds and averaged into 15-minute observations. Soil moisture is sampled once every 30 minutes. Every 5 minutes, all available observations are sent from the site to the Central Operations Facility in Norman.
The shapefile was reprojected to Albers Conical Equal Area projection and clipped to the counties surrounding the upper Washita River basin. The shapefile was imported into the Geodatabase and metadata written.