UAlbany's New York State Mesonet Marks a Decade of Weather Monitoring with Launch of Climatology Website
By Mike Nolan
ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 21, 2026) — The most detailed record yet of New York's changing climate is now just a click away thanks to a new service launched by the New York State Mesonet.
Announced today by Gov. Hochul, the New York State Mesonet at the University at Albany has launched a new website that allows users to explore and analyze a decade-plus of weather conditions across the state. Collectively, the data represents the first milestone in a 30-year project to understand how climate change is impacting New York and is an invaluable resource for applications like forecasting future renewable power generation from wind and solar.
Launched in August 2015, the NYS Mesonet has since grown into the most advanced and comprehensive weather observation network in the nation, featuring 127 standard stations spaced an average of 17 miles apart across the state, as well as several specialized sub-networks.
With most of its stations online for at least 10 years, the Mesonet's new climatology website can compare current weather conditions against long-term averages, track variability across days, seasons and years, and help put past extreme events, from heat waves to flash flooding, into context for emergency managers, policymakers and atmospheric scientists.
Mesonet operations are supported this year with $2 million in state funding, and the new climatology site makes all these products freely and easily available to every New Yorker.
"Reaching a decade of weather observations across our network is a major milestone," said UAlbany Atmospheric Sciences Research Center Director Chris Thorncroft, who supported the launch of the Mesonet and now serves as the executive director. "The climatology website allows us to transform a decade of high-resolution data into usable information, giving emergency managers, meteorologists, and leaders across weather-sensitive industries a clearer picture of how day-to-day weather fits into long-term climate trends across the state."
Local Data for Every New York Community
Each Mesonet site is equipped with automated sensors that measure numerous weather variables in real time, including temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, pressure, precipitation, solar radiation, snow depth, and soil temperature and moisture, as well as a camera that photographs current conditions.
Collected every five minutes, the data feeds weather prediction models and decision-support tools for users across New York, and is widely relied upon by forecasting, emergency management and transportation agencies — including the National Weather Service and the New York State Weather Risk Communication Center, a partnership between UAlbany and the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services that ensures New York's public sector has the weather intelligence it needs to act.
"The New York State Mesonet was established not only as an early warning weather detection system, but also as a long-term climate monitoring network. As we mark its 10-year milestone, this new climatology website is both timely and essential," said New York State Mesonet Director June Wang. "It puts a decade of data directly in the hands of New Yorkers, letting anyone see how their community is trending against long-term averages, explore past extreme weather events, and better understand local climate trends."
For meteorologists, emergency managers and other decision-makers across the state, it provides a new way to prepare for extreme weather events and gauge their magnitude relative to others in the past decade.
"We wanted to build a website that showcases what our network has observed over the last decade, helping New Yorkers put their day-to-day weather into perspective," said New York State Mesonet Senior Software Engineer Nathan Bain. "Whether you're wondering if your heating bill will be higher this winter, deciding when to irrigate your crops, or simply curious how today's temperature compares to average, this site offers local weather data at a level of detail that was not available before."
A Decade of Weather Information
The NYS Mesonet’s first standard site, located in Hudson Crossing Park in Schuylerville, celebrated its 10th anniversary last August. More than 100 sites have since celebrated the decade-mark of data collection.
While ten years is a meaningful milestone, it's not yet long enough to factor into the official U.S. Climate Normals produced by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which are calculated on a 30-year basis.
Accordingly, the Mesonet’s new climatology website refers to its figures as averages rather than normals, and they should not be used for formal climate planning purposes. The website will be updated nightly with the latest observational data.
The Mesonet’s real-time weather data, various products and dashboards are all available to the public on the Mesonet website.