Pulling Hourly or Higher-Resolution
Data
For most high-temporal-resolution data requests, Mesonet data will be easiest to retrieve and most appropriate. However, if weather type information, visibility, or freezing precipitation information is required, National Weather Service ASOS observations will be best suited. Also, an NWS station may be closer to the point of needed information than a Mesonet station. Therefore, be sure to check station locations in order to determine the best source.
Mesonet data: preceding month or earlier (back to January 1994):
- Use the mesotext program on the cig server, /mesodata drive, /mesodata/ directory (NOT a web page - run through a command-prompt window).
- For an extended time period, use more coarse time interval (i.e., 15 minutes, 60 minutes), but if only a short time is needed (i.e., time of an accident) use 5-minute resolution
- Select the time zone appropriate for the date (CST, CDT)
- Pull the nearest Mesonet station (see Station Locations Guide); if the location is in between sites, pull the nearest two or three if necessary. Sometimes a federal (NWS / ASOS) observing site may be closer.
- Output is written to the same mesodata/ directory, in the file you specify (helpful tip: it is easiest to end a filename with .txt).
- The program will caculate the data retrieval charge for you.
- Print or e-mail the listing to the client.
Mesonet data: current month - mesotext will not work. You will need to use the Mesonet data retrieval webpage to pull *.mts files for selected stations and then the Mesodata PC program.
- You will need to select the needed date(s) plus one day because the data files will be returned in UTC time (ending 6 or 7 pm).
- Choose a 15-minute increment or higher (MTS files are not available at 5-minute resolution).
- Choose File Format as "1 Station, All Times" and MTS Listing. You can select multiple stations by using ctrl-click.
- Save the file returned from the web request to the cig /mesodata disk, /mesodata/Mesodata PC/raw/ directory; unzip the files.
- Run the mesodata program (in the mesodata/Mesodata PC/ directory), same as mesotext (above).
Meteograms - images of time series for Mesonet stations.
- Log onto CIG and type bash
- cd /ocsdata/processes/mesonet/meteograms
- Generate images using meteomaker.pl --enddate YYYY-MM-DD --endtime HH:MN --stid XXXX --tz CST --root NAME (XXXX=Mesonet site id, tz is time zone - CST, CDT, GMT, and NAME is the filename root - whatever you want to call it)
- Output goes to the cig webserver, http://cig.mesonet.org/tmpdata/ (password-protected; use the nidstmp password)
- download the files to your PC (ftp to cig /home/httpd/htdocs/tmpdata/ or display them on the webpage and 'save as').
NWS / ASOS reports -
- Use one of the options from Plymouth State University
- (a) Meteograms / Text listing for a single station, date (choose "Decoded Obs Text Listing")
- (b) Surface Data Text Listing for a single time, all stations in a selected state (choose "Decoded Obs")
- Be sure to print out or copy the guide, "Decoded Text Summaries" from the website.
- You may also retrieve METAR-encoded observations, which may include additional comments not listed in the decoded report.
- For areas in Eastern Oklahoma, you can also try the NWS-Tulsa Office archives
- The NCDC
Hourly observations website also provides hourly
listings, but is more cumbersome
- select "U.S. - Select by Station (Uneditied Local Climatological Data)". Follow the steps and choose the "Unedited LCD Hourly Obs" option.
- If these data sources do not have the needed data, OCS has archives of METAR-encoded observations and hourly observations from Earthinfo on CD.