A new weather station system in Ararat municipality will allow farmers to be better informed to make decisions about their agricultural enterprises.

Anthony Evans is part of a triple-generation farming set-up, which comprises his 88-year-old father, himself, 53, and his 22-year-old son.

The Evans property at Willaura is host to one of the 25 multi-sensor weather station units that makes up the Ararat Rural Information Network, ARIN, which is just a few weeks away from public access.

Mr Evans farms sheep and a large cereal crop across 2300 acres at Willaura, with another 1200 acres leased a few kilometres south.

The region’s weather – and its adherence to or detour from the Bureau of Meteorology’s bulletins – plays a part in just about every decision Mr Evans makes about his business, sparking his attendance at an information night at Willaura early last year.

The night provided landowners with information about how they could become part of the weather station project.

“The weather stations are spread out all over the municipality,” Mr Evans said.

“Ours has no trees around it to obstruct its readings, and it’s on the fence line, so there’s access to it all the time.”

The data station collects wind speed, wind direction, wind gusting, barometric pressure, rainfall, thermal imaging and more – all measured continuously, and reported every minute – providing invaluable guidance for on-farm choices.

“It’s very handy for spraying,” Mr Evans said.

“Quite often, just five to 10 kilometres away, you’ll have very different readings. All these things, they count towards decisions you make.”

Mr Evans said prior to the network, he had nothing to base his weather-dependent decisions on.

“We’d use the Bureau of Meteorology, but as you know, they can be pretty… not accurate,” he said.

He also would occasionally use a hand-held weather meter, but it had its own drawbacks and was not an ideal tool.

The weather station’s real-time readings also include soil moisture, collected via a probe that extends nearly a metre into the soil.

“That will give us guidance for fertiliser – whether to fertilise at that time or not – and sowing times, to a certain degree,” he said.

“This is the ‘guinea pig’ probe. Neighbours could also have probes, but you’d need to contact them to get their readings.”

The problem of sharing privately-collected weather information is something Mr Evans had thought about three years ago, when first considering installing a private weather station on his property.

But as part of the ARIN network, now he can consult not just his own readings but those of the 24 other stations within the station network.

“All the neighbours will be able to log into it, too,” he said.

“Anyone can log into all weather stations around the municipality.”

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