Meteorological data from over 2800 automated environmental monitoring
stations in the western United States are collected, processed,
archived, integrated, and disseminated as part of the MesoWest program.
MesoWest depends upon voluntary access to provisional observations from
environmental monitoring stations installed and maintained by federal,
state, and local agencies and commercial firms. In many cases,
collection and transmission of these observations are facilitated by NWS
forecast offices, government laboratories, and universities. MesoWest
augments the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) network
maintained by the NWS, Federal Aviation Administration, and Department
of Defense. MesoWest increases the coverage of observations in remote
locations and helps capture many of the local and mesoscale weather
phenomena that impact the public.
The primary goal of MesoWest is to improve timely access to automated
observations for NWS forecasters at offices throughout the western
United States. In addition, integration of the observations into
analyses of surface conditions at high spatial and temporal resolution
provides additional tools for nowcasts and forecast verification.
MesoWest observations are being used for many other applications,
including input to operational and research models and research and
education on weather processes in the western United States.
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Question: I would like to put up an automated weather station and supply data
for my area. What type of stations are most sites using? How do I register a
station with MesoWest once I have it operating and on the internet?
Answer: MesoWest obtains nearly all of our citizen weather observations through
the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) (http://www.wxqa.com/).
We believe their website has information on how to get a system up and
running as well as communicating with the world. These CWOP observations
then get ingested into a system known as Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System, MADIS
(http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/MADIS/index.html) which in turn sends the data
to us here at Mesowest. As such Mesowest does not directly interact with
individual citizen weather stations.
As far as the type of weather stations: There are a range of possibilities
for high quality weather stations. There are some links and ideas if you dig around
on the CWOP page. A few companies you might look at are Davis Instruments, Vaisala,
Cambell Scientific (weatherhawk), lacrosse, and we are sure there are many more.
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Question: To Whom it May Concern,
Where can I download historic RAWS data for plotting in a spreadsheet?
I cannot seem to locate any links for downloading data.
I am interested in 2008-2010 temperature and rainfall data
from station MDDC1-Mad River in NW California.
Thanks.
Answer: Mesowest provides a video describing how to download data:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti9E2_DDaKs
As described in the video, if you search for the station you are
seeking for by typing in the station's id, you are directed to this page:
http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/meso_base.cgi?stn=MDDC1
On the lower left hand side of the page, you will see a link called
"download data."
http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/download.cgi?stn=MDDC1&year1=2010&day1=6&month1=8&hour1=&timetype=LOCAL&unit=0
You can then fill in the desired options. If you do not have a
mesowest account, you will only be allowed to download a day's worth
of data. However, if you register for a free mesowest account, you can
download up to 31 days of data at a time, as Mesowest is provisional.
If you would like more information and data, you can go to the
official archive site Western Regional Climate Center:
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/
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Question: A Typical Concern,
The Mesowest sensor at LUFI1 has been flaky over the past few weeks, as far as
reporting wind speed and direction. Looks like it has gone south for the season now.
Answer: MesoWest does not own or operate the stations in our database.
You will need to contact the station owners to learn more about the problems
with the station. For a station like, LUFI1 :
http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/meso_base.cgi?stn=LUFI1 ,
the owners are the Bureau of Land Management (http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en.html)
and the Boise Interagency Fire Center (http://www.nifc.gov/).
Station Owner [responsible party]
---> Left Menu (above face book link) (LeftMenu---topLeft)
---whose network it belongs to: (DATA COURTESY OF:)
contains the station owner information that need be contacted.
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MesoWest Variables are defined here:
http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/database/variable_select.cgi
16G23 indicates:
16=sustained wind speed, G23=wind gust speed
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Question: I would like to know: on your wind direction data, the wind is
blowing "from" direction, or blowing "to" direction?
Answer: The standard for automated data is the wind blowing "from" direction.
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Question: How do you determine if a station is "active" or "inactive"?
Answer: Provided by the MesoWest data maintainers:
Our procedure for setting the active/inactive flag, which applies to all stations, is that any station that has reported an observation in the past 30 days is "active". After 30 days of no observations, a station is set to "inactive". Also, new stations are :"active" for 30 days after they have been inserted in the db, whether they have reported data or not. New RAWS are flagged "active" within 15 minutes of being inserted in the db; the status for other stations is checked daily at 2:30 am. It is not possible to change the flag in the db outside this procedure. (If data providers, users, etc could set the flag using different criteria, then the flag would become meaningless.) To NWS Forecast Offices: Keeping your own status flag for stations of interest would be an alternative.
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Question:
Hello,
A question has been in the back of my mind for quite a while concerning
your point forecasts. In the Current Conditions section, there is a
statement about "Observation Quality". Most of the time when I am looking
at the Bozeman forecast, or almost any location for that matter, I see
that the Quality is listed as "Caution". In fact, at this point in time,
the Billings forecast is the only one I can find without this disclaimer.
Even your Gt. Falls forecast has a cautionary note to it!
Can you please explain what constitutes a "Caution" level of quality, or
where I can find such information? I`ve tried various searches of the
NOAA website for such information but only come up with links to general
"quality" hits.
Thanks for taking the time to respond!
Answer: When the observation is `old`, we have the word `Caution` so that the user is alerted to the fact that the data is not `current`.
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I hope that this is of some help, regarding Mesowest.
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