wefacts

WeFacts

wefacts (weather-facts) makes it easy for researchers and developers to obtain historical weather data including temperature, wind speed, wind direction, etc.

Weather Data Source:

The Integrated Surface Hourly Data Base in data access category Land-Based Station https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access).

Specifically, the raw weather data records are available at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/noaa/isd-lite/ . It contains hourly weather recordings from 1700+ weather stations covering every state in the US. It also offers weather recordings for other countries with a limited coverage.

The severe weather reports, which are available at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/swdi/database-csv/v2/, are also integrated into the data set.

Hourly Weather Records Columns:

• ZTime:
• Time: local time
• OAT: outdoor air temperature (in Celsius, scaled by 10)
• DT: dew point temperature (in Celsius, scaled by 10)
• SLP: sea level pressure (in Hectopascals, scaled by 10)
• WD: wind direction (in Angular Degrees, scaled by 1)
  • clockwise direction, between true north and the direction from which the wind is blowing
  • wind direction for calm winds is coded as 0
• WS: wind speed rate (in meters per second, scaled by 10)
• PPT: liquid precipitation depth dimension for one hour (in millimeters, scaled by 10)
• PPT6: liquid precipitation depth dimension for six hour (in millimeters, scaled by 10)
• SKY: sky condition total coverage code
  • 0: None, SKC or CLR
  • 1: One okta - 1/10 or less but not zero
  • 2: Two oktas - 2/10 - 3/10, or FEW
  • 3: Three oktas - 4/10
  • 4: Four oktas - 5/10, or SCT
  • 5: Five oktas - 6/10
  • 6: Six oktas - 7/10 - 8/10
  • 7: Seven oktas - 9/10 or more but not 10/10, or BKN
  • 8: Eight oktas - 10/10, or OVC
  • 9: Sky obscured, or cloud amount cannot be estimated
  • 10: Partial obscuration
  • 11: Thin scattered
  • 12: Scattered
  • 13: Dark scattered
  • 14: Thin broken
  • 15: Broken
  • 16: Dark broken
  • 17: Thin overcast
  • 18: Overcast
  • 19: Dark overcast

Severe Weather Category

- 'nx3tvs'       - (Point)   NEXRAD Level-3 Tornado Vortex Signatures
- 'nx3meso'      - (Point)   NEXRAD Level-3 Mesocyclone Signatures
- 'nx3hail'      - (Point)   NEXRAD Level-3 Hail Signatures
- 'nx3structure' - (Point)   NEXRAD Level-3 Storm Cell Structure Information
- 'plsr'         - (Point)   Preliminary Local Storm Reports
- 'warn'         - (Polygon) Severe Thunderstorm, Tornado, Flash Flood and Special Marine warnings
- 'nldn'         - (Point)   Lightning strikes from Vaisala (.gov and .mil ONLY)

Missing Records

Not all weather data are recorded and missing values are represented as -9999.

Help

If help is needed, please join our discussions on WeFacts Google Group