Make Mesonet Work For You
Have you heard of Kentucky Mesonet? You may have seen one of their 86 weather stations around the state collecting valuable weather data that you can access online or through their app.
Now, you might be thinking, “So it’s another weather station… so what?”
What makes these stations especially valuable for growers is that they provide much more than the standard temperature, wind, and rainfall data. Kentucky Mesonet also tracks soil temperature and soil moisture from depths of 2 to 40 inches. Even better, the data comes from local stations. For many of you, that means you can access information directly from the county where you grow.
With readings updated every five minutes—and some stations holding up to 17 years of historical data—growers can gain a highly accurate understanding of how their soils warm and cool throughout the season. This information can help prevent seed and tuber rot, slow germination, poor plant growth, and potential disease issues later in the season.
In unpredictable springs like 2026, it can be especially important to rely on actual soil temperature readings rather than simply following the date on the calendar. For example, the minimum recommended soil temperature for planting peppers, watermelon, and squash is 70°F. If you followed the traditional advice to “plant after Derby Day” in Mercer County this year, you would have been planting into 60°F soil on May 2nd. Ten degrees below the recommended minimum would make for some very cranky pepper plants!
How to Find This Information
- Visit Kentucky Mesonet.
- You should see a map of Kentucky and a red box on the left listing a county (likely Warren County). Click the white “Details” button in the upper-right corner of the red box.
- This will take you to a new page where you can use the search bar to select the station closest to you.
- Once you’ve selected your station, you’ll see the current weather information. Scroll down to the box labeled “Mesonet Graphs” and click it.
- This will open a new page.
- Select the soil temperature graph—or any graph you’d like—and adjust the timeframe you want to view.
- Consider the depth at which you typically plant and look at the average soil temperatures over the past week or so.