Rainfall and wind measurement in precision agriculture

Rainfall and wind measurement in precision agriculture underpins two decisions that come back every week throughout the season: how much and where to irrigate, and when it's safe to spray. Today both are usually made on the basis of a county-level forecast or "stepping out the front door" — data that has little to do with the conditions on a specific field. Meanwhile, measurement technology has taken a big step in recent years: a rain gauge with no moving parts measures precipitation with a resolution of hundredths of a millimetre, an anemometer has nothing to wear out, and the readings flow into the app by themselves from fields kilometres away. Below we break the topic down: what to measure with, where to place measurement points and how to turn numbers into decisions.

Rain doesn't fall "on the farm" — it falls on specific fields

Summer rainfall, especially storms, is a localised phenomenon: a single storm cell can soak one strip of land generously and leave the neighbouring fields dry. A farm running several scattered plots regularly discovers that "yesterday's rain" fell on only half of them. Without per-field measurement the outcome is always the same: some crops get water they don't need, while others wait for irrigation that was deemed unnecessary.

It's also worth remembering that rainfall and soil moisture are two different numbers: the rain gauge says how much water fell, while a probe in the root zone says how much of it actually reached the plants. We covered the second part of this puzzle separately in the article on soil moisture monitoring; together they give the full picture of water management.

Rainfall and wind measurement in agriculture: hardware that needs no servicing

Classic tipping-bucket rain gauges have one occupational ailment: they clog with leaves, dust and insects, and every clog is a hole in the data at the most important moment. That's why the Nextriv Weather Pro station measures precipitation piezoelectrically — with a vibration sensor, no tipping mechanism. The 0.01 mm resolution captures even drizzle relevant to disease models, while the station also records the intensity of sudden, short downpours in their first minutes. A range of up to 1000 mm covers the whole season with no maintenance.

Wind is similar: instead of cups and a vane that wear out and ice over, the measurement is ultrasonic — with not a single moving part, up to 60 m/s, with direction measured to the degree. For the farm this means no annual servicing and a measurement that keeps working in winter too.

A full 6-in-1 station makes sense where irrigation decisions are made. At points where wind matters most — by an orchard block for spraying, or at the far end of the land — a lighter 5-in-1 variant without the rain gauge is enough:

Both stations are fully autonomous (a 15 W solar panel, at least a week of operation without sun) and connect to the platform over a long-range radio link: up to about 2 km in built-up areas and about 15 km in open terrain. One gateway by the farm buildings therefore covers measurement points scattered across the whole farm. Installation comes down to a mast and the brackets included in the kit — a typical install takes a few dozen minutes, and configuration is done by tapping your phone (NFC) or over a USB-C cable. Record continuity is handled by local memory holding over 19,000 records: after any connectivity outage the data backfills on its own, so the measurement series has no gaps.

Wind opens and closes the spraying window

Spray drift isn't just lost product — it's the risk of a neighbour's grievance, damage to adjacent crops and formal trouble. A wind speed limit for a treatment only makes sense when it refers to a measurement at the crop at the moment of spraying, not to a forecast from a few hours earlier.

In the Nextriv platform every station metric has up to four thresholds: two warning and two critical. For wind a simple setup works — a warning threshold below the treatment limit tells the operator that conditions are starting to deteriorate, and a critical threshold at the limit sends an alert: SMS, web push, email, Microsoft Teams, Discord or an audible alarm in the app. Deduplication makes sure a gusty day doesn't flood the phone with dozens of notifications, and when the wind drops back below the threshold, the platform sends a back-to-normal notice on its own — the treatment window is open again. After the season, the measurement history documents that treatments were carried out within permitted conditions — hard evidence in case of a dispute.

From alerts to seasonal analytics

Live readings are only half the value. The platform's dashboards plot rainfall, wind, temperature and pressure from many points at once on multi-series charts, and per-field rainfall totals show in black and white how unevenly the season treated individual plots. For deeper analysis — disease models, water balances, fertilisation planning — you pull the data out with XLSX or CSV exports, and PDF reports tidy up communication with your agronomist or adviser.

Weather stations are usually just the first step: the same gateway and the same platform will later handle soil probes, sensors under covers or ultrasonic silo level measurement for feed or grain. The system grows with the farm — without replacing anything. You'll find the full map of scenarios on the solutions page for agriculture and greenhouses.

From one station to a measurement grid

The sensible rollout order is simple: one 6-in-1 station at the most important plot, then cheaper wind points where you carry out treatments, and finally soil probes in irrigated zones. The FREE plan — 10 sensors, one gateway, a year of measurement history — easily covers such a start with no subscription, and the limits can be raised as you expand.

You'll find a plan comparison in the pricing. And if you'd rather see the system in action first, book a demo — we'll show on live data what a wind alert and per-field rainfall totals look like.