The Climate Data! How to Find the Highs/Lows/Rain Totals!
It’s usually at the breakfast table… or on the way out the door that you find your child hasn’t completed a very important homework assignment. It’s not difficult, it doesn’t involve a lot of math, but finding the climate data for the current or previous day can be difficult if you don’t know where to look.
Every National Weather Service Office across the country lists the high temperature, low temperature and rain/precipitation totals for the day after about 5pm. The high temperature of the day is usually reached between 12 and 5pm unless you had a weather event come through that day. I’m going to go through it step-by-step. And, then, I will have an example search to show you how I found the high/low and rain near Houma, Louisiana. FYI… the National Weather Service only has a certain number of weather observation stations across the United States, so you will be finding the climate data of a station near you, most likely not the town where you live.
The first thing you want to do is go to the National Weather Service main site. Here is the link: www.nws.noaa.gov.
Then follow these steps:
- Type the name of your town and the state in the small box near the upper left hand corner of your screen. (It says Local Forecast by “City,St” above the box. To show you an example, I’m typing in Houma, Louisiana.)
- Hit the Go tab to the right of the box after entering the name of your town and state.
- You will be taken to a forecast screen where it will list the current conditions in your town as well as any weather hazards, and the forecast. (This is the page I was linked to for Houma.)
- This step is very important! You need to find the link that will take you to the local NWS Office near your town. On the left hand side, just below the NOAA emblem or sign, it will say NWS and the name of the local National Weather Service office. The writing should be in blue. Click on that link. (If you look at my example page, it says NWS for New Orleans/Baton Rouge, LA.)
- That will take you to the MAIN PAGE of the National Weather Service office in your region. (Again, here’s the link to the page in my example: NWS for New Orleans/Baton Rouge, LA)
- On the left hand column, scroll down to the word Climate, below the word climate, it will say local. Click on the word Local. (Example: It should look like this. )
- In the middle of the page, you will see a blue bar, with the words Observed Weather Reports.
- Below this, you find a series of selections.
- First, select Daily Climate Report.
- Move over to the next column.
- Select the National Weather Service Office closest to you.
- Go to the next or third column. If it’s 7 o’clock at night, and your trying to find the data for today, then you just need to leave “Most Recent” selected and hit Go.
- If you are trying to find the highs/lows and rain for a previous day, you need to select Archived Data, and select the date you need. Then hit Go.
A new window will open. It should look like the page below: (The information you want is underlined and in red.)
-Dawn Brown
____________________________________________________________________
These data are preliminary and have not undergone final quality control by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Therefore, these data are subject to revision. Final and certified climate data can be accessed at the NCDC – http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov.
Climatological Report (Daily)
000
CDUS44 KLIX 112119
CLINEW
CLIMATE REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS
418 PM CDT FRI SEP 11 2009
...................................
...THE NEW ORLEANS CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR SEPTEMBER 11 2009...
VALID TODAY AS OF 0400 PM LOCAL TIME.
CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1971 TO 2000
CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1946 TO 2009
WEATHER ITEM OBSERVED TIME RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST
VALUE (LST) VALUE VALUE FROM YEAR
NORMAL
..................................................................
TEMPERATURE (F)
TODAY
MAXIMUM 80 1106 AM 98 1980 88 -8 90
MINIMUM 73 127 PM 57 1969 72 1 75
AVERAGE 77 80 -3 83
PRECIPITATION (IN)
TODAY 2.28 5.64 1998 0.20 2.08 0.32
MONTH TO DATE 4.30 2.28 2.02 6.32
SINCE SEP 1 4.30 2.28 2.02 6.32
SINCE JAN 1 41.48 47.68 -6.20 43.40
SNOWFALL (IN)
TODAY 0.0
MONTH TO DATE 0.0
SINCE SEP 1 0.0
SINCE JUL 1 0.0
SNOW DEPTH 0
DEGREE DAYS
HEATING
TODAY 0 0 0 0
MONTH TO DATE 0 0 0 0
SINCE SEP 1 0 0 0 0
SINCE JUL 1 0 0 0 0
COOLING
TODAY 12 15 -3 18
MONTH TO DATE 176 172 4 184
SINCE SEP 1 176 172 4 184
SINCE JAN 1 2620 2259 361 2508
..................................................................
WIND (MPH)
HIGHEST WIND SPEED 30 HIGHEST WIND DIRECTION SE (130)
HIGHEST GUST SPEED 43 HIGHEST GUST DIRECTION SE (120)
AVERAGE WIND SPEED 6.9
SKY COVER
POSSIBLE SUNSHINE MM
AVERAGE SKY COVER 0.9
WEATHER CONDITIONS
THE FOLLOWING WEATHER WAS RECORDED TODAY.
THUNDERSTORM
HEAVY RAIN
RAIN
LIGHT RAIN
FOG
HAZE
RELATIVE HUMIDITY (PERCENT)
HIGHEST 88 100 AM
LOWEST 79 1000 AM
AVERAGE 84
..........................................................
THE NEW ORLEANS CLIMATE NORMALS FOR TOMORROW
NORMAL RECORD YEAR
MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE (F) 88 94 1991
MINIMUM TEMPERATURE (F) 72 57 1969
SUNRISE AND SUNSET
SEPTEMBER 11 2009.....SUNRISE 644 AM CDT SUNSET 711 PM CDT
SEPTEMBER 12 2009.....SUNRISE 644 AM CDT SUNSET 710 PM CDT
- INDICATES NEGATIVE NUMBERS.
R INDICATES RECORD WAS SET OR TIED.
MM INDICATES DATA IS MISSING.
T INDICATES TRACE AMOUNT.
Soggy Forecast for Both Gulf & East Coasts
Gulf of Mexico Satellite Image (courtesy NOAA)
I’m not updating on Hurricane Fred anymore… if you want more information, go to my links under tracking hurricanes, or to the forum pages.
Both the Gulf Coast States and portions of the East Coast are getting pummeled by showers and thunderstorms that will dump heavy rain for the next couple of days. And, the National Hurricane Center is marking both with a low (less than 30%) chance for tropical development. As far as the Gulf Coast rain, it’s mainly being driven along by a mid level storm over Texas. What that means to you is, right now, it’s not tropical. However, it’s a slow moving storm that will dump HEAVY rain over Texas and Louisiana the next couple of days. Most of central Texas is already under Flash Flood Watches. Click on the following link to watch San Antonio’s rainy forecast. (Click on video forecast above the 7-day.)
Those flash flood watches will probably move to the Texas/Louisiana border and then portions of Southeastern Louisiana by the weekend.
In New York and Philadelphia, heavy rain is expected over the next couple of days due to a low pressure system hanging out just off the coast. Here’s a look at the video forecast in Philadelphia. (To see video, scroll down, it will be on the right hand side of the page.) The area of low pressure affecting the East Coast is expected to slowly lift off to the east starting Sunday. They are under flash flood watches as well.
Stay tuned to your local TV station if you live in areas along the Gulf Coast or East Coast for the latest updates. Of course, you can ALWAYS access the latest weather information from my website links here. On the right hand column, scroll down the to the green banner with the headline, “Get Your Local TV Forecast!”. Click on that link below, and you will have access to TV weather forecasts from across the 50 states.
It’s Friday!… I’ll talk to you later… -Dawn