Do-it-yourself" feature? - annual rainfall graphs

[elagache]

Dear WeatherCat fans,

While not completely a drought-buster, we've had an amazing series of storms this past week in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Since California has been in a very severe drought, it was important to me to make some sense of what this additional rainfall had done.  To do this, I have kept an Excel spreadsheet that I periodically update manually.  It is the bottom graph on my website's graphs page.  I've reproduced it here with the companion text below it:

Comparison of observed rainfall at Canebas Weather station with seasonal averages for Orinda as reported by: idcide.com.  Data is updated manually.  Last update March 17, 2012.  February was less than 1/2 of normal.  However the storms of the week of March 12 have produced more than twice the normal rainfall for a normal month of March.  To March 17, Orinda was now up to 82% of normal rainfall up to March and 74% of normal rainfall for the whole year.  On March 1, Orinda had received only 40% of an average yearly rainfall. 

Now the simplest way for anyone else do recreate this is to follow my lead and crunch the numbers in a spreadsheet program and produce the graphs by hand.  I'll be happy to share the spreadsheet with the caveat that . . . . well it isn't the neatest spreadsheet in the world! 

I'm tossing this graph into the WeatherCat Feature Requests topic (as I had done before for LWC) as a sort of consciousness raising effort.  I'm afraid for folks living in "moist" corners of the world . . . . like Scotland  - such graphs could be positively depressing!!    However, reports on MacWeather and other places have shown that even obviously "drought-proof" corners of the world - ain't no more.   

Given that climatic instability seems more real than any other slogan of recent times folks may want to track information like this in an easier way than manually moving data into a spreadsheet.  However, this is a very messy and awkward problem to automate.  My purpose is mostly to give an example of how one might want to use WeatherCat to track broader climatic trends.  Hopefully, through a conversation about this sort of problem, we might decide if there is something WeatherCat might do to help us with this sort of problem or . . . . . decide a spreadsheet is good enough!

Cheers, Edouard 

[sec]

Edmund, this is precisely the feature I've been hoping to see. Thanks for the great illustration!

Richard

[Tornado Tim]

Yes a comparison graph would be fantastic!

[Randall75]

Hi Edouard
 Did you do this with one of your Apple scripts?
 

[elagache]

Dear Richard, Tim, Randall, and WeatherCat fans, 

Oops!    I seem to have been a little too successful in "consciousness raising" . . . . .   Ya' see it ain't as simple as it looks.

Edmund, this is precisely the feature I've been hoping to see. Thanks for the great illustration!

Well, that was the intention!    However, there is no way this sort of graph can be completely automated as far as I know.  The obvious problem is the seasonal data to compare against.  Getting hold of this sort of data . . . . . t'aint easy!  .  In my case I found a web site that purportedly assists real-estate buyer select a community to live in - not exactly the most reputable source . . .    I have a bit more confidence than that because the reference is a location in Berkeley, CA.  The only place in Berkeley that I could imagine collecting this kind of meteorological data is the University of California.  Given the number of Nobel prizes they got - I hope they can accurately collect weather data!!      Berkeley is within biking distance, so reasonably close enough.  Still, that's a lucky coincidence for me and not wholly satisfactory.  I'm starting to suspect that my location normally has a significantly higher rainfall than Berkeley.  This isn't what you would normally expect since Orinda is further inland and their is a row of hills between us and Berkeley.  So that's all the sort of work - you - would have to do to get something to compare your station against.

Now there are other services that claim to provide this sort of information.  For example, for a hefty fee, AccuWeather claims to have lots of weather statistics.  I've never taken advantage of their "try free for a day" offers, to see exactly what they have.  Unless you can get this data, there is nothing to compare against and WeatherCat can easily produce the graph of actual rainfall in the year.  So nothing exciting.

Yes a comparison graph would be fantastic!

Well, if you all could get "normal seasonal" rainfall data from somewhere, how would you make this data available to WeatherCat?  My worries is that this rapidly becomes a "mission impossible" for Stu because once you have a comparison graph for rainfall, how about temperature, or winds, or even solar radiation?  In each case, not only would the data be very hard to obtain, but a new methodology would be needed.  So I think in general this is a bad idea.

I've floated this idea again because of the unusual importance of rainfall for all of us.  Rainfall is critical for our water supply and sadly everywhere in the world water supplies are coming up short.  When I hear about potential water rationing in parts of England!?!?!    Perhaps this is general enough problem to consider as feature we want in WeatherCat.  We could specify a very simple way to enter the average seasonal rainfall.  A plain-text file with 12 numbers would allow WeatherCat to have a comparison for this particular weather metric: rainfall.  So I suppose I ask the question once more: is potential drought and water shortages something common enough for WeatherCat users that this sort of a graph would be desirable as a "one-time hack"?

Did you do this with one of your Apple scripts?

Alas, I have searched for some way to do something like this with AppleScript - no luck.     There are a number of free graphing tools out there, but they don't seem suitable for this sort of a graph.  Microsoft Excel isn't free and doesn't support AppleScript, only Visual Basic.  Apple's own spreadsheet Numbers might work.  It does support AppleScript and isn't too horribly expensive at $20.  I don't know if folks would be interested in exploring that route or not.  That is a much more practical way for people to create graphs that are customized for their particular locals.

My own personal feeling that this sort of graphs should be things for each of us to take on as a "do-it-yourself" task.  I don't think Stu would be able to efficiently implement this sort of a graph that would please that any folks.  So I encourage everyone to think a little more about what sort of climatic information they would like to have available.  Right now, there is a lot of interest in real-time weather data.  However, we all should outgrown that novelty.  What matters to us really is what the weather is doing long-term.  To decide how that matters - requires a little thinking first before we start asking our computers to do anything!! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[jace]

 

I've decided to use local PWS all within a 12 or so mile radius of my home, there are at least 5, and I've collected their monthly total rainfall figures from their Wunderground pages. I've worked out the monthly averages from that data and am starting to compile a chart in Excel.

I know there are going to be variations in the data collected from the different stations, but it's giving me base figures to look at for at least two years, and has been quite interesting to see the wet summers we've been getting in Suffolk, especially compared to the winters.

All I have to do is keep trying to get the data the way Edouard has it on a Excel chart ! 

Cheers JC

[elagache]

Hi JC and WeatherCat climate watchers,

I've decided to use local PWS all within a 12 or so mile radius of my home, there are at least 5, and I've collected their monthly total rainfall figures from their Wunderground pages. I've worked out the monthly averages from that data and am starting to compile a chart in Excel.

I haven't had a chance to look into trying to combine data from stations to get a better estimate for what your particular location should get seasonally.  In my case I have two locations with reasonably lengthy records.  There is also weather data from a state park to my East, but it is much drier.  I had pondered trying to interpolate in between the two locations but . . . . . sure don't have any bright ideas on how to do this. 

All I have to do is keep trying to get the data the way Edouard has it on a Excel chart ! 

I'll try to make my spreadsheet available, but unfortunately I'm really swamped right now and ran into a few snags trying to get WC Storm Monitor upgraded to the new WeatherCat AppleScript scheme.    So right now I'm even further behind than I thought I was. 

I need to take a look at how I can document how to use it.  The math is very simple, but unless you know where to plug in the numbers for your location, it is probably worse than useless - it will a annoying frustration.   I remember as far back as the early 80s, folks were getting really fancy with "spreadsheet programming," but I don't know anything about it beyond simple math manipulation.  I'll have to see how I can help folks understand what I did.

I'll try to keep things like this on MacWeather rather than posting them here.  The spreadsheet is an obvious example of something anyone with an interest with the weather can use.  Right now MacWeather is clearly languishing while this forum is thriving.  Not sure how MacWeather can survive unless this community embraces the idea that both forums are a "collective home."

Cheers, Edouard