New rainfall monitoring system for flood warning alerts in Doña Ana County

On Wednesday October 29th 2014, representatives from the Doña Ana County Flood Commission (DACFC), the National Weather Service (NWS), and New Mexico Climate Center (NMCC) office met to discuss the last updates of the “New Rainfall Monitoring System to Aid in Flood Warning” project. The purpose of this meeting was to go over the county and Elephant Butte Irrigation District's plans for establishing an ALERT network.  According to NWS most of the network will be made up of precipitation and stream flow gauges, but there will be some full-fledged weather stations involved.  One of the goals is that all agencies can work together to ensure that resources are spread out and used in such a way that they benefits everyone.

The DACFC office in conjunction with the NWS and other entities has installed the first series of rainfall monitoring station in Doña Ana County. Collected data from these stations is available for the public on internet.  One of the benefits of this project is that this data can be used as a research tool. During the meeting, they agreed that collaboration from the different agencies is crucial in order to gather all the data into one site and make it available for people that need it.

Data contained at the website are from automated sensors and are provisional. One of the challenges of creating this webpage is to make data uniform, since receiving data from different agencies weather stations result in units discrepancies. They recognized this and are working on it.

According to Paul Dugie, the Doña Ana County Flood Commission Director, the warning system represents an ongoing investment that augments diversion structures and dam maintenance with tool for residents to monitor rainfall in upstream areas.  Knowing what happen upstream is going to be key in understanding downstream behavior and this represents a valuable tool, not only for these agencies but also for the USGS as a key entity.   

DACFC is identifying population centers as potential monitoring sites to place the alert systems, since these zones are where more population is at risk.

The rainfall gauges all send data to a central tower on A Mountain east of Las Cruces, and a transmitter on that tower relays the information to the Doña Ana County Government Center, where it’s posted onto the Internet webpage at: https://donaana.onerain.com/home.php

This website and the network of rainfall and stream level gage sites is a collaborative project of Doña Ana County Flood Commission, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, the City of Las Cruces and the National Weather Service.

Available data:

• Current and historical rainfall and river level monitoring data
• Access to a network of weather and stream data collection equipment that are located throughout the County
• Real-time local weather data  
• Historical data for gage sites
• Ability to view data within multiple map views or view lists of gage sites
• Graphing and tabular data downloading functions for selectable time periods

Coming soon data:

• Current water levels in the Rio Grande
• Links to regional weather and river level forecast sites for up to the minute severe weather and flooding outlook

Full implementation is estimated to be completed in 2017. It includes 30 remote weather stations, stream gauges and water-level monitoring stations located throughout Doña Ana County, all of which will be linked to the National Weather Service and to other gauges in southern New Mexico and El Paso County.

 

-Cristina González

Sources:

https://donaanacounty.org/content/new-rainfall-monitoring-system-aid-flood-warnings

https://donaana.onerain.com/home.php

Installing new weather stations to support viticulture in northern New Mexico

On September 26^th 2014, two members of the NM Climate Center Team travelled north from Las Cruces to perform maintenance on three weather stations and install a new station.  The maintenance was performed at Ponderosa Valley Vineyard, Corrales Winery, and Los Lunas Agricultural Science Center. The new station was installed at the Estrella del Norte vineyard.



Locations of weather stations. Image from Google Earth.



In cooperation with the New Mexico Climate Center, the NMSU viticulture program is installing weather stations at vineyards across New Mexico.  A Davis Weather Station was installed at the Estrella Del Norte secondary vineyard.  According to Elizabeth Smith, the secondary location was chosen because it is in a topographically challenging area and also is away from the main tourist location.  The owners wished this location to be monitored due to its increased chance of experiencing freezes. Installing the physical station and computer system took approximately 1.5 hours and was maintaining network contact at the time of leaving.

Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith

Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith

Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith



Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith

The second location they visited was Ponderosa Valley Vineyard.  The stop was necessitated by poor response from the computer system, so a new computer with updated software was installed. The data stored on the old computer will be sent to the vineyard at a later date.  Communication to the network was working when we left.

The third location, Corrales winery, needed an updated computer as well. Communication to the network was working and stable when leaving.  The Corrales location worked for approximately 7.5 hours before a network error occurred. At Elizabeth's request, the winery re-booted the computer and monitoring resumed within 3 hours.

The last location they went was Los Lunas Agricultural Center. The weather station in this location was failing to record accurate air/soil temperature data.  They also noticed that the station was reporting very low battery voltages.  Therefore, they decided that the problems could be one or all of the following:

1.  A bad battery,
2.  A bad charge controller,
3.  A bad solar panel, or
4.  Bad air/soil temperature sensors.

Once they arrived, Stanley Engle opened the battery box and immediately noticed that the battery terminals were very corroded.  Further, the water level in the battery was very low.  The voltage was 12.5 volts and datalogger was also reporting 12.5 volts.  He covered the solar panel with a black trash bag and recorded 3 volts from the solar panel.  The voltage reported by the datalogger slowly began to fall until it stabilized around 8 volts.  During this time, the datalogger was also showing bad data from the air/soil temperature sensors. Stan uncovered the solar panel and replaced the battery with a new 12v deep cycle marine battery.  He repeated the process of covering the solar panel, however, this time, the datalogger reported voltage of 12.5 volts.  The air/soil temperature reading were also holding steady at reasonable levels.  Uncovering the solar panel also yielded steady 12.5 volts reported by the datalogger and manually measured at the charge controller.  From this process, they concluded that the only issue we had to deal with was the bad battery.  Since then, the voltage and air/soil temperature readings have all been reasonable.



Battery at Los Lunas Agricultural Center. Photo by: Stanley Engle



Finally, the Los Lunas office/weather station Campbell Scientific RF 401 radios were replaced with Campbell Scientific RF 416 radios.  The RF416 radios operate in the 2.4 GHz frequency and are lower transmitting power radios.  Since the Los Lunas weather station is so close to the office, we didn't need higher transmitting power radios.  The RF 401 radios are now available to be used at other locations.



Weather station at Los Lunas Agricultural Center. Photo by: Stanley Engle