# Presentation: 010406

## Harry Hillaker, State Climatologist

- Iowa Dept. of Agriculture & Land Stewardship
- July 8, 2003 NWS CRH Climate Focal Point Workshop
- Here are a few very useful climate data and monitoring web addresses:
- Storm Data; sortable storm reports by date, county, state and type of event... a great time saver,
-  but usually a 3 or 4 months behind current date:
- _[http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwEvent~Storms](http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwEvent~Storms)_
- Recent storm reports (archived LSR’s from Storm Prediction Center):
- _[http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/yesterday.html](http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/yesterday.html)_
- Historical Time Series of climate division data (1895 to present).   Numerous drought indices,
-  plus a few other parameters.
-  One of the few sites around with multi-decade data with nationwide data:
- _[http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/onlineprod/drought/main.html](http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/onlineprod/drought/main.html)_
- Nationwide archive of DCP data for the past 7 days (useful for Storm Water Discharge reports):
- _[http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hads/](http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hads/)_
- This site includes the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin which provides an excellent summary
-  of national and internationa weather & climate events on a weekly basis:
- _[http://www.usda.gov/oce/waob/jawf/](http://www.usda.gov/oce/waob/jawf/)_
- National Climatic Data Center homepage... a huge storehouse of data...
- but often hard to navigate around.
-  Go here to find the Regional Climate Centers and State Climatologists across the country
-  (lower left corner of home page):
- _[http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html](http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html)_
- NOAA’s drought page.   I particularly like the Soil Moisture Monitoring Data which gives
-  a quick view of soil moisture conditions nationwide:
- _[http://www.drought.noaa.gov/](http://www.drought.noaa.gov/)_
- The U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications web page...
-  the place to go for sunrise, sunset
- and other astronomical data for anywhere in the world:
- http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/
- The U.S. Geological Survey Water Resources Home page.
-   Great national streamflow map updated continuously.
-   Very complete and user-friendly archive of river discharge, river stage and lake level data:
- http://water.usgs.gov/
- Probably one of those sites you are not supposed to refer people to;
-  nevertheless it is a great resource for the raw METAR reports from all
-  reporting points across the U.S.
-  This is important for those non-NWS and non-‘.edu’ users
-  who do not have free access to all of NCDC’s web data.
-    This site allows viewing of about the past 1 to 3 months of data from any given site.
-  To find the METAR data... click on your state; then the county of interest...
- then scroll down to the bottom of the page to “Show Station Obs”:
- http://www.uswx.com/us/wx/
- Another private web site useful for providing hourly data.
-  Click on the state, then click on your city... then look carefully to find the
-  “Historical” data box just to the right of the “International Weather” menu.
- Great compared to uswx.com in that you can go back several years....
-  Bad in that it provides only a few observed elements – notably missing is wind direction:
- http://www.wunderground.com/
- UCAR’s radar image archive.
-    Click on image archive for regional mosaicsof WSR-88D images.
-   Provides maps for every 30 minutes with much more detail than NCDC’s on-line radar archive.
-   Provides one way of at least guesstimating if lightning was present for those insurance claim
- questions you occasionally get.
- http://locust.mmm.ucar.edu/
- NCDC’s contractor page containing a wealth of on-line scanned
-  images of monthly and hourly weather data and station history archives.
-   This site requires a user ID and password but any NWS office should be able to receive one
- (if you don’t already have one).
-   The menu is simple but you may find it difficult to figure out where to look for the data you want –
- and how to search for records.
-  There is on-line Help available but it may be better to just call someone already familiar
-  with its workings to get you started:
- _[http://](http://noaa.imcwv.com/login.asp)__[noaa.imcwv.com/login.asp](http://noaa.imcwv.com/login.asp)_