Author Topic: Get Normal Rain Amounts For Your Location?  (Read 2780 times)

KeithC

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Get Normal Rain Amounts For Your Location?
« on: May 05, 2013, 10:32:54 PM »
Hello Everyone!

This is really doubtful, but I'll ask it anyway: Does anyone know if there is a a tag combination that will display what is often referred to as "normal rainfall for this time of year", as per location?

Or does NWS or any other site offer that info by way of a code snippet for one's web site?

I know it's a reach but I had to ask.

jace

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Re: Get Normal Rain Amounts For Your Location?
« Reply #1 on: May 06, 2013, 01:13:48 PM »
hi Keith

Not that I know of, this has come up a couple of times in the past, and the only way we could think of doing historical rainfall comparisons was to find local historical records and work out averages in say excel.

I found the UK Met office records for my local (ish) weather station going back 100 years, worked out monthly and annual averages from 1980 and use that data as " historical monthly averages ". It's not going to be spot on accurate as the local MET office is a few miles away, but gives me something to work on until I build up a few years worth of data at my location.


KeithC

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Re: Get Normal Rain Amounts For Your Location?
« Reply #2 on: May 06, 2013, 02:19:56 PM »
Thanks, JC.

I was also able to find 100 year data (for my town in Texas) at the NWS site. My lazy side, though, wants to find the "normal" data somewhere that has already been averaged for me and easily coded into my site. I'll bet I wouldn't be to far off the mark if I just displayed "Trace" as my "normal" rainfall  [lol]

elagache

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Hi Keith,

Given that you are in as dry a climate as I am apparently perhaps my solution will work for you.

This is really doubtful, but I'll ask it anyway: Does anyone know if there is a a tag combination that will display what is often referred to as "normal rainfall for this time of year", as per location?

What I did is to find on a Real Estate website what was the reported weather for our town.  The website is called Idecide.com and here are the list of weather sources for Texas:

http://www.idcide.com/weather/tx/index.htm

I then made an Excel spreadsheet that I update monthly during the rainy season and simply display the graph as a static image on my weather website.  It is at the bottom of this page:

http://www.canebas.org/Weather/Canebas_graphs.html

Here is the graph itself:



I think it is good enough for most purposes.  If you have Excel I can send you the spreadsheet and you can just replace the values with your local ones.  The only thing is that in California the rainy season is counted as running from July to June, so the spreadsheet is designed around that.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

KeithC

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Re: Get Normal Rain Amounts For Your Location?
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2013, 02:36:56 AM »
Hi most-helpful JC and Edouard!

I found what I was looking for at weather.com. Here's the link:

http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/94563

That zip code at the end of the URL is for Orinda. Just change that zip code to whatever town you want and nice graphs will depict its monthly averages for temperature and rainfall. Other averages available there, as well, like annual averages, etc.

I attached Edouard's monthly rainfall averages (that is, if your zip code is 94563) as an example.

Yes, I'm aware that my original question was asking about "normal rainfall", and I can see that I also failed to specify "monthly", but that's what I meant to ask: Where can I find my monthly averages (or normals). I'm not sure what the difference between "monthly averages" and "monthly normals" would be. I assume "averages" is statistically close enough. But then again I may assume too much. I never really expected there to be a WeatherCat tag just waiting for me. So these weather.com averages will suit me fine, I think. An array can hold all twelve monthly averages and be called upon whenever and where ever.