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Kenneth L. Tapp - Professor, Texas State University

Our president of Texas State University regularly hosts these little coffee chats with faculty and staff. And I just happened to mention that––in the conversation––that I would love to build a weather station.

I immediately identified we need a partnership with the entity in Texas that builds these weather stations. You all have done a phenomenal job of building over 120 of these weather stations. We're station number 128. It was a natural partnership, and you have a lot of Texas State alums that work for the TexMesonet and at the Texas Water Development Board. So, it was a relationship ready to happen.

As an educator, you know, when students are always looking at their app, you know, they look at the forecast or what's the current weather conditions? What's the science behind that? What's happening in their own backyard? And so, you know, now I can pull up weather data in our classroom and it's weather data from our own backyard.

So, when I talk about why did the dew form on the grass this morning? Well, let's look at what our sensors on our own campus measured and we can explore that. Or if I talk about the drought, how deep does the soil dry out? Well, we've got sensors now in the soil. We can talk about that. That's what excites me the most, is being able to show students— here's something we measured, here's why it happened—and just helping them connect more with what we're studying in the textbook that's happening in our own backyard.

Brady Franks – Director, Texas Water Development Board

I'm so proud to be here for the dedication for the 128th Texas Mesonet station since 2016. These stations provide critical data for decision makers, emergency management coordinators, and everyday Texans for what the weather patterns are like in their specific area. Whether or not that's rain, hail, soil, moisture, wind. 

These would not be possible without our local partners. That includes landowners. It includes institutions like Texas State University that help us maintain, construct and operate these, and hopefully they will for decades to come.

Kenneth L. Tapp – Professor, Texas State University

Developing a partnership with the Texas Water Development Board is important for our university, and I think it's a mutually important relationship because we want to help better educate our students but also prepare students. So, we have a whole bunch of grad students that are going to be pursuing careers that would either be related to the Texas Water Development Board or complement and align with what you all are doing.

People worked together to achieve this shared vision of creating a valuable tool that we can use that will benefit our students and will benefit the community surrounding the campus, because we're helping people better understand the world around them.