Historical High and Lows (Temperature at least)

[stardog2000]

This would require some research on the users part, however I think it would be nice if we could research the daily high and low local temperature stats for each date in a year, import them to WeatherCat which would store them somewhere with the other WeatherCat data.  Then, with the data at hand it could be used as one of the parameters on custom graphs showing relative differences between average and current conditions

Dave

[elagache]

Hi Dave and WeatherCat fans,

This would require some research on the users part, however I think it would be nice if we could research the daily high and low local temperature stats for each date in a year, import them to WeatherCat which would store them somewhere with the other WeatherCat data.  Then, with the data at hand it could be used as one of the parameters on custom graphs showing relative differences between average and current conditions

In drought-prone California, I try to create an analogous graph for rainfall by hand using an Excel spreadsheet.  Below is the monthly rainfall graph for last winter that I made:



However, what I've discovered is that even rainfall can vary quite widely in my area.  I'm fairly certain now that this graph is actually incorrect and the normal rainfall at my station is higher than the seasonal values I got from a location that should actually be wetter than my house.  I'm in a suburban location were you would expect this sort of data to be commonplace - but it doesn't exist.  The situation is much worse in more rural locations where the nearest stations with historical data is many miles away.  Also, it appears that whatever sort of interpolation methods are used to estimate conditions based on nearly measurements are cruder than we would prefer.  I've noted that the "temperature at my location" from services like AccuWeather can be as much as 10 degrees F off from what my station reports.  So, getting a seasonable average to compare against is a lot harder to do that I sure wish it was.

So when this idea has been suggested in the past, it hasn't generated much interest from WeatherCat users in part because of these difficulties.  However, if you could do some researching and locate a source of historical data with a better track-record than I've thus-far found, perhaps that would perk up the interest of the WeatherCat community.

Cheers, Edouard 

[jace]

I'm the same as Edouard, I manually log and chart various data parameters in Excel.

As a comparison I am using official UK MET Office data that online for the local (25 miles away  ) offical weather station. These published records go back to 1914. At the moment I am using their data back to 1980 to give myself comparison data  for average monthly TMax, TMin, TAve and rainfall totals.

We have had some exceptional rainfall earlier this year, as can be seen on the attached chart, I felt that I had set my station up wrong, but have found another station on Wunderground who is 5 miles away and who's monthly rainfall totals for March and April were within 5 mm of mine, other months its even closer.

It's never going to be an exact comparison, using the MET Office data but it gives me something to work with for the next few years until I build up my own records database.

JC