There are expanding efforts to track and analyze weather data.

Today, the Kentucky mesonet at WKU, that's Western Kentucky University cut the ribbon on its 80th station this month, and Greene County, a Greensburg farmer, donated a parcel of land to house the side.

Mesonet stations monitor air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall, and other conditions on.

Most importantly, it's a record.

It's a record that will exist in perpetuity to help us understand more clearly climate across the Commonwealth.

For over ten years now, almost 15 years, the General Assembly has allocated a little over $1 million.

Currently, we're at 1.75 million annually to assist the building of these stations and maintenance of them, and to pay for the staff, the quality people that record the information and make it available to the National Weather Service, along with all of our citizens.

The station sits just a few miles west of green River Lake, a popular tourist destination.

Several agencies use the climate data that's collected.

We partner with the National Weather Service.

They use our data very heavily, especially in times of active or severe weather, such as the flooding and the severe storms we had earlier this month.

We also partner with the U.S. Geological Survey, the USDA.

We work very closely with members of emergency management who stay busy during times of severe weather, as well as the flooding that we had in Kentucky in early April.

There are two new sites, more new sites, one in eastern Kentucky's Clay County, the other in north central Kentucky.

The Kentucky mesonet hopes to have 85 stations by the end of the year, and eventually one in every county.