Mesonet Photo Explorer

About

The Montana Mesonet is a network of 215+ stations operated by the Montana Climate Office at the University of Montana, measuring temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation, and soil conditions to support drought monitoring and land management statewide.

In 2020, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers funded 205 HydroMet stations across central and eastern Montana — one per ~500 sq mi — to improve drought and flood forecasting across the Upper Missouri River Basin. Each station includes a pan-tilt-zoom camera capturing photos in all cardinal directions, toward the sky, and at the snowpack.

Using the Photo Explorer

• Date & Time — Browse any date and hour; use ▲▼ to step day by day. All times are Mountain Time.
• Direction — Pick a camera angle to show that view across all stations at once.
• Search — Press / to jump to the search box, then ↑/↓ + Enter to fly to a station and open its gallery.
• Click a station — Open a photo gallery for that station; click or press Enter on any photo to enlarge it.
• Zoom & pan — Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to pan; use the +/− and full-extent buttons at top-right.
• Boundaries — Toggle county lines and tribal nation boundaries (which lightly shade the photos).
• Export — Download a PNG of the current map.
• Share — Copy a shareable link to your clipboard. The URL reflects every choice.
• Single-key shortcuts can be disabled by adding ?kbd=off to the URL (it sticks while you browse).

About the station grid

The photos tile a survey grid aligned with the Montana–North Dakota border — a coordinate system designed to minimize distortion across the Upper Missouri River Basin, with one cell per station. On this web map the cells appear as gently rotated squares.