LAKE PLACID — The newest environmental monitoring station in the New York state Mesonet — a network of weather monitoring sites operated by the University at Albany — is set to open before winter in Lake Placid at Uihlein Farm.

This comes three years after the farm, which was operated by Cornell University as a potato production and research facility since the 1960s, closed.

“The Lake Placid site is a valuable addition to our New York state Mesonet network,” June Wang, Mesonet program manager said in a Sept. 5 statement. “As climate change impacts the Adirondacks, it will be crucial to continuously monitor the regional environment. I am excited to work with the foundation, the first non-profit organization to co-sponsor a station, and promote education and public outreach opportunities at the farm.”

At 2,100 feet in elevation, this site will be the highest Mesonet location in the Adirondacks and the third-highest in the state, after the Hartsville and Tannersville stations. There was a 30-foot weather tower already on the Uihlein Farm grounds. Mesonet researchers plan to retrofit this tower over the next few months to fit Mesonet’s specifications rather than build a weather station from scratch.

The Uihlein Foundation currently owns the former farmland. It was donated to Cornell in 1961 and re-acquired by the foundation in 2020. Cornell still uses parts of the land for its Maple Research Forest, which was operated separately from the shuttered potato farm. This will be the first Mesonet site created in partnership with a private entity.

The Mesonet was created in 2014 with a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Its main purpose is to detect severe weather early enough to provide adequate warning and preparation time for New Yorkers. Its network of 126 stations was completed in 2018. The Lake Placid station will be the first addition to the network in five years.

Each of the weather stations are equipped with automated sensors that collect data in real time every five minutes. They measure temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, pressure, precipitation, solar radiation, snow depth and soil information. They also take and send images. Across the state, there are specialty sites, too: A network of 17 sites that gather data about the atmosphere; a network of 18 sites that monitor surface energy; and a network of 20 sites that measure the water content of snow.

All of the real-time information collected by the stations is available to the public on Mesonet’s website and app.

John D. Leekley, chairman of the Uihlein Foundation board, said that the new station will “fill an important data gap.” Mesonet has stations nearby at the base of Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington and in Tupper Lake. According to historic weather data, both Wilmington and Tupper Lake generally experience average temperatures one or two degrees higher than Lake Placid’s.