Albany, N.Y. -- New York hopes to build the most sophisticated web of early warning weather stations in the United States to better predict everything from flash floods to ice storms.
The $23.6 million system could save lives by letting planners and residents know when heavy rains, flash floods, tornadoes and other severe weather is headed their way, state officials say.
"Flooding is one of biggest weather hazards and causes of loss of life," said Everette Joseph, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at SUNY Albany. "We think the (weather system) will give us early warning forecasts about flooding so emergency managers can evacuate citizens and allow them to take protective cover sooner."
New York has been slammed with hurricanes, ice storms, blizzards and floods in the past decade. Since 2006, New York communities have sustained more than $36 billion in damages from severe weather, according to data the state has submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking to help fund the weather detection system. (See table below for details.)
More than 60 people died in those disasters.
Preparing for a warmer world
As the world gets warmer, state officials say New York is particularly vulnerable to severe weather. An American Meteorological Society study in 2011 said New York was the state most vulnerable to economic impacts of severe weather.
New York's system would be the most intricate and extensive of any similar system in the country, state officials say. New York now has 27 weather stations, mostly at airports and operated by the National Weather Service. The proposed network of 125, more sophisticated stations would peer deep into the soil and high into the air to forecast high winds, tornadoes, floods and other weather disasters.
One key to the system is speed: stations would transmit data every five minutes to emergency planners in what's called "now-casting."
"It's critically important to be able to respond to events that happen in very short time frames," said James Dias, SUNY Albany's vice president for research.
Dias said the system - called a mesonet -- could be in place within three years.
If New York had had such a system in August 2011, it could have better predicted the severe flooding caused by tropical storm Irene, said Christopher Thorncroft, chairman of SUNY Albany Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. Eight people in New York died during Irene, all but one from drowning.
As Irene was heading to the Northeast, forecasters predicted it would dump 10 inches of rain in the Catskills. The final tally was 18 inches.
"The reliable records of rainfall by the National Weather Service arrived a week after the event," Thorncroft said. "The mesonet will accurately measure rainfall over a much wider area in real time, which will allow you to better understand what's happening to river flow and the possibility of flash flooding."
Five billion pieces of data
Six states have similar systems. New York is modeling its mesonet on Oklahoma's, considered to be the best in the country. Each of Oklahoma's 120 mesonet stations measures soil temperature at 2, 4, and 12 inches below ground; soil moisture at several depths; air temperature at 4.5 and 27 feet; relative humidity, wind speed, direction and gusts; solar radiation; barometric pressure and more.
The stations transmit data every five minutes; since the mesonet went into operation 20 years ago, it has transmitted 5 billion observations.
More than 1,000 emergency managers in Oklahoma use the data, said Chris Fiebrich, manager of the Oklahoma mesonet.
"It might be anything from a local emergency manager canceling an outdoor high school football game because they know that high winds are on the way to a municipality closing a road prone to flooding because they know a mesonet site upstream is showing high water levels," Fiebrich said.
The data can help fire officials predict where wild fires might flare up. It's also used to help predict and track tornadoes: Oklahoma has an average of 62 tornadoes per year, the fourth-highest total in the United States.
Oklahoma's farmers and ranchers also have access to the data, which helps them decide the best time to apply pesticides.
"Just about every pest and disease that affects a crop is affected by the weather," Fiebrich said. "A fungus that grows on a crop might be affected by the humidity, and an insect larva might be affected by the temperature."
Ice storms to terrorist attacks
In New York, each station will have a 30-foot tower dotted with instruments. Seventeen stations will include a laser-like technology that can look six miles into into the atmosphere. These stations will be deployed along major highways and electrical line routes from Buffalo to Long Island.
By looking at temperature and moisture in the atmosphere, Joseph said, forecasters can better predict ice storms - a major cause of downed power lines in the winter.
"We'll be able to get some information of the potential for icing well in advance of the event," Joseph said. "That information can be fed to power companies."
Six of the stations built near New York City will also include chemical and radiation monitors that could help pinpoint the direction of fallout from a potential terrorist attack.
Data from all 125 stations would be fed instantly to the National Weather Service, which issues weather warnings. The data would also go directly to the state transportation and canal offices, Northeast River Forecast Center and local governments.
SUNY Albany would pay 25 percent -- $5.9 million -- of the system's construction cost. The state Homeland Security office is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the remaining $17.7 million.
Both SUNY Albany and the state Homeland Security department refused to reveal exactly how that money would be spent. In response to Freedom of Information Law requests from syracuse.com, both agencies blacked out all figures that would detail the $23.6 million in spending.
SUNY Albany has also chosen locations for each of the 125 stations, but all of those pages were blacked out, too.
Severe weather in New York, 2006-2013
|| June 26, 2006 || Storms/flooding || $400 million || Oct. 12, 2006 || Lake effect snow || $530 million || Nov. 16, 2006 || Storms/flooding || $32.9 million || Feb. 2, 2007 || Lake effect snow || $2.6 million || April 14, 2007 || Coastal flooding || $95.8 million || June 19, 2007 || Storms/flooding || $12.4 million || Aug. 8, 2007 || Storms/flooding || $20 million || Dec. 11, 2008 || Ice storm || $2 billion || Aug. 9, 2009 || Flooding || $90 million || Nov. 12, 2009 || Flooding/tropical storm || $5.7 million || March 12, 2010 || Storms/flooding || $30 million || Sept. 16, 2010 || Tornadoes/winds || $25 million || Dec 26, 2010 || Blizzard || $38 million || April 26, 2011 || Storms/flooding/tornadoes || $30.1 million || Aug. 28, 2011 || Tropical Storm Irene || $1.3 billion || Sept. 7, 2011 || Tropical Storm Lee || $1 billion || Oct. 29, 2012 || Hurricane Sandy || $32 billion || Feb. 3, 2013 || Blizzard || $32 million || June 26-28, 2013 || Flooding || $7.3 million |