Whether installed in your fields or near your buildings, the weather station becomes a vital part of your daily routine. From supporting simple decisions to serving as a reliable daily reference, this article explores why weather-monitoring sensors are essential tools for every day.

The agricultural world and weather stations

With thousands of Sencrop stations installed across Europe, a wealth of valuable weather data is collected daily — from humidity levels and rainfall over the past 24 hours to wind-affected regions. This data provides a precise, localised snapshot of current weather conditions.

For farmers, this information is essential: it helps plan crop protection strategies against disease or pests, and informs decisions about when to harvest, whether to anticipate or delay it.

Accessing such real-time insights requires a professional-grade weather station, equipped with reliable, properly installed sensors. Over time, this tool builds a true climatological record — but even after just a few weeks, patterns begin to emerge. You can already identify consistent rainfall periods or, conversely, extended dry spells. These early observations help anticipate droughts or periods of high humidity.

In a weather-sensitive profession, where operations are closely tied to climate variability, a reliable weather station becomes an indispensable tool.

Anticipate the weather at the heart of your crops

Having access to ultra-precise sensors enables a much clearer understanding of highly localised weather patterns, which can vary significantly over just a few kilometers.

It’s essential to remember that factors such as terrain, altitude, and surrounding vegetation can greatly influence local weather conditions.
Generic weather apps aren’t designed to reflect the real conditions on your farm or in your fields. In contrast, accurate, on-site weather observation empowers you to fine-tune key decisions — from sowing and irrigation to crop treatments and harvest timing.

This personalised weather insight helps reduce waste and improve yields by ensuring each intervention is truly necessary and well-timed. For instance, analysing humidity and temperature data directly from the field allows early detection of conditions favorable to disease.

More than just a monitoring tool, the weather station has become an essential early-warning system for farmers — complementing forecast models and helping you better anticipate day-to-day weather shifts.

The role of weather stations in weather forecasting

In the world of weather forecasting, there’s a common saying: "To make an accurate forecast here, you need to understand the weather on the other side of the world." This reflects a fundamental truth — weather systems are interconnected, and reliable forecasts depend on the collection of precise, real-time data from across the globe. Key indicators such as temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, rainfall, and wind direction all contribute to the accuracy of short- and medium-term forecasts.

For example, if a weather model predicts wind gusts of 100 km/h during a storm but actual conditions reach 120 km/h, it's a clear sign that the storm is stronger than anticipated in that area. This insight allows forecasters to quickly adjust predictions for regions still in the storm's path.

Understanding, monitoring, and analysing major weather systems is essential for producing reliable forecasts — and weather stations play a critical role in this process.

Protection of people and property

Every year, farmers face weather events of varying intensity — some of them increasingly disruptive. Over the past two years, repeated and heavy rainfall has regularly impacted the profession, pushing many into critical situations. Before that, it was prolonged droughts that complicated crop management and led to poor harvests.

While these extremes may already be visible in your weather station’s data archives, it’s time to view the station not just as a data collector, but as a key tool in weather risk prevention. Of course, a weather station can’t stop a storm or prevent a stream from overflowing — but with increasingly advanced sensors and a growing network of stations, it becomes possible to better anticipate weather events and their consequences.

Every year, weather stations play a crucial role in protecting lives and property. For instance, during a violent storm, if rainfall levels exceed critical thresholds, the data can help forecast runoff behavior and the risk of flooding — something that has repeatedly affected farms in recent years.

Better understanding climate change

Earlier in this article, we touched on how the data collected by your weather station gradually builds into a valuable climatological record. Over 10, 20, or even 30 years of continuous observation, these stations provide a clear view of how the climate is evolving in a specific area.

Even after just 3 to 4 years, your station can already reveal meaningful patterns — identifying the warmest seasons, or pinpointing periods when temperatures dropped to their lowest on your farm. This process is mirrored on a global scale. Millions of weather stations, some operating for decades, contribute to a massive, shared climate database.

The longer a station has been active, the more scientifically valuable its data becomes. These long-term records allow us to compare current conditions with historical “seasonal norms” — a comparison we frequently make in our articles using your station data.
Without these long-term observations, it would be impossible to compare one winter to another, or to understand how our climate is changing over time. Unfortunately, the data gathered over recent decades clearly shows a troubling trend: global warming is accelerating. Heat records are now broken far more often than cold ones, which have become increasingly rare.