The Utah Climate Center and USU Extension’s Integrated Pest Management program have partnered to provide climate based web utilities to assist orchardists to model insect, disease frost potentials, and to monitor drought stress within orchards. Weather data is collected from a network of 29 mission tailored weather stations located in orchards in 8 Utah counties (Cache, Box Elder, Weber, Davis, Utah, Washington, and Juab) and Canyon county in Idaho. Stations have research grade sensors that measure solar radiation, wind, pressure, relative humidity, air and soil temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and simulated bud and leaf temperatures.

Reference ET is calculated by the ASCE standardized reference ET equation (ASCE-EWRI 2005) - often referred to as the Penman-Monteith method. This method calculates an estimated reference ET for both short crops (similar to clipped grass) (ETo) and tall crops (similar to full-cover alfalfa) (ETr). The calculations are made utilizing individual site level information (latitude, longitude, and altitude) and measured variables (air temperature, humidity, wind, and solar radiation). Since actual ET (Eta) is both difficult and expensive to measure, a crop ET (ETc) can be calculated by the user as the product of ETo or ETr. Obtaining crop coefficients for specific crops and growth stages can be obtained from a variety of sources. The choice of whether to utilize ETo or ETr largely depends on the overall crop height.

Daily, hourly and current conditions data as well as the web utilities are available to orchardists and the public from this website.

The web utility, Utah TRAPs (Timing Resource and Alert for Pest), includes pest management information primarily for tree fruit pests, including codling moth, peach twig borer, western cherry fruit fly, and fire blight. After selecting a geographic location, the pest of concern, and the current date, the user is then provided with a summary of the pest phenology (% moth flight and % egg hatch) as well as management options based on current degree day values (degree days are a unit of heat accumulation).

In addition to the pest and disease prediction tools, there is an alert system for frost and critical disease potential. Orchardists who choose to enroll for a cell text or email notification when conditions that require action are reached. Participants can customize an alert profile, selecting the weather stations to monitor, alert triggers, and the frequency and mode of the messaging. This is a free service.