Surface weather data are collected by many networks on a National or Regional Scale. Often these data either do not include desired variables or the sites are spaced too widely to meet the needs of individual states. Thus, many states in the Midwest collect data at time resolutions of one hour or better, with many sites including relative humidity, solar radiation, soil temperature, and soil moisture measurements and estimates of potential evapotranspiration. See the summary table for an overview of available observations in each central US state.

Near real-time/archived data available for air temperature (AirT); relative humidity (RH); wind (speed, direction, sometimes gust); precipitation (Ppt); solar radiation (Solar); leaf wetness (Leaf); soil temperature at various levels; soil moisture at various levels; derived dew point temperature (Td) and derived potential evapotranspiration (PET). Number of sites refers to in-state number. ( ) data only at a few sites.

Click on Network to go to detailed description, click on icon to see map of network stations. X: measured at all sites. (X): measured at some sites. *: Network has sensors at multiple levels.