Winter is upon us and that creates a special need for weather information for farmers, especially in high value crops like fruits, vegetables and nursery. To learn how the Agricultural Weather Information Service (AWIS) creates extra weather information and forecasting I spoke to Karl Harker, Vice-President for Operations for AWIS. I asked him about any information he’d like to share and what the company offers. He talks about the weather pattern that really started in the fall moving from a neutral one to a weak La Niña one.

We also took a look back for this year and Karl says that overall, farms had a pretty good year. However, the hurricane damage areas were hit hard. a few spots in California due to the fires and some areas that started to become more dry.

AWIS is one of the last pure ag weather information services, has been around for decades, and has expanded into other geography and industries. The need for ag weather services started when the National Weather service stopped focusing on it in 1960. Karl says there is a lot of weather information out that doesn’t have an ag background or a focus on the actual data that has to be collected and analyzed.

Find out more about AWIS and the coming winter season in our interview: Interview with Karl Harker, AWIS