By Tyler Williams
The AgriTools mobile app developed by Nebraska Extension provides many in-season uses for farmers and ranchers.
The app accesses data from the High Plains Regional Climate Center, National Weather Service, and Nebraska Mesonet to provide useful agriculture-related weather and climate information. In addition to providing the local forecast, the detailed forecast graph is helpful when planning for practices that depend on certain weather conditions, such as spraying or baling hay. The hourly graph provides a visual context for the next 12 hours (out to five days) for
- temperature,
- dew point,
- precipitation potential,
- relative humidity,
- wind speed and direction.
As always in Nebraska, weather forecasts are constantly changing and challenging to accurately predict; however, frequent use of this information may help reduce the weather risk involved in many practices.
The AgriTools App can also aid in monitoring water use and crop growth stage. By interpolating data between measurement points, the app provides an estimate for the latest reference ET (evapotranspiration) and GDD (growing degree days) values for any location in Nebraska. This may help with monitoring crop water use and GDD, if other methods are not used. The app also allows you to select your crop stage (currently only corn and soybean) to determine the one-day crop water use, as well as keep track of seasonal (starting May 1) GDD accumulations.
In addition to these in-season uses, AgriTools provides quick access to additional climate resources and related agricultural information, apps, and websites developed by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The AgriTools mobile app was conceived by Nebraska Extension Educator Tyler Williams and developed by Nic Colgrove, Pat Whitlock, and Becky Aiken in IANR Media.