Extension offers information for weather-watchers, too

I work with weather watchers. Farmers need to watch the weather to produce good outcomes for crops and protect livestock under certain conditions. Decisions in agriculture are based on many factors including the weather, genetics, and economics.
I’m a bit overwhelmed with all the weather information that is available with just one click on the computer. The UK Ag Weather Center developed a one-click, concise weather product for all states. You can easily search for weather in each county in the country. Weather watchers keep an eye on many details. You can look at frost potential and also drought, floods, tropical weather, earthquakes and much more.
There’s a section for homeowners to use for gardening in addition to the information for agriculture producers.
The Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN) asked the UK Ag Weather Center to develop 1-click for use by specialists as well as producers and homeowners.  
You can access it at http://weather.uky.edu/php/next48.php or use the mobile site to monitor the weather from any location http://wwwagwx.ca.uky.edu/pda.shtml.
This website provides information on precipitation including hazards, forecast maps for the next 12 hours, tomorrow and the extended forecast as well as temperature, weather conditions, sky condition and hazardous weather.
You can also check on earthquake activity worldwide and the drought monitor. The historical perspective of different weather conditions is also available.
UK Ag Weather also prepares an agriculture update daily.
You can look at the weather trends for the last six months at intervals of one day, three, seven, 14, 21, month to date, or 30, 60, 90, 120 and 180 days at http://weather.uky.edu/all_tables.shtml.
The U.S. Drought Monitor is updated every Tuesday. You can monitor by state and county. Anderson County is not experiencing a drought now but the western part of the state has some issues. Check http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu.
You may want to be a weather watcher because of personal interest or because it affects your business. You now have access to the best available information. You don’t have to wait for the weather report on television to know what’s going to happen in Anderson County or anywhere in the U.S. And, if you really want to know about earthquake activity around the world, then you can monitor that too.

Joan Martin is a consumer and family sciences agent with the Anderson County Extension.