Casey Johnson will be the featured speaker for the meeting April 17 at 7pm at the Grayson LandCare office at 104 Courthouse street in Independence. In addition to his main presentation on the Network for Environment and Weather Applications ( NEWA) he will also field some “ask the arborists” questions at the end of the evening.
Casey Johnson is an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) Certified Arborist who studied Urban Forestry and Arboriculture at Penn State. He spent the first 12 years of his career in commercial and residential tree care. Casey worked throughout the mid-Atlantic and about 10 years in the Savannah/Hilton Head area. In 2020, Casey began working for the Virginia Department of Corrections and now helps manage greenhouses, produce operations, and orchards in SW VA. 2020 also saw the beginning of planning and installation of the DOC orchard at the River North Correctional Center in Independence. Currently, the orchard at River North is home to 4000 apple trees.
The Network for Environment and Weather Applications connects you with data from weather stations across the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and South. National Weather Service forecasts on the NEWA website make it a handy place to find weather information. NEWA was created in 1995 by the New York State IPM Program and continues to evolve to stay current with advances in IPM and weather forecasting. A weather station was recently brought onto the NEWA network in Elk Creek (Courtesy of Elk Creek Properties). NEWA is a free service, and Casey Johnson will demonstrate some of its applications as well as field questions about its use.
You can find more information on NEWA here https://newa.cornell.edu/