For many years, the Kansas Climate web page (climate.k-state.edu) has made precipitation data available by counties, however there were certain limitations. Up until September 2018, data was only averaged from a limited selection of stations. Another limitation was that the data only went back to 1939. Thanks to a new data set available from the National Centers for Environmental Information, we have been able to update this resource. The data set is now based on a gridded product that includes all stations in the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). In addition, the dataset has been extended back to 1895. You can select the year or month, as well as the observed, normal, or departure.
Figure 1. Example map showing annual precipitation by county for 1936 (http://climate.k-state.edu/precip/county/).
In addition to the county precipitation maps, we have also added a similar feature for temperature. It is now possible to get average temperatures by county for a given month or year. As with precipitation, the temperature data set is available from 1895 through the previous month. Both maps are available from the main menu under “Temperature” or “Precipitation”.
Data for the previous year through the current is preliminary, and may show some differences as additional stations are included and as quality control algorithms are applied. More details about how the dataset is developed and updated can be found at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cirs/climdiv/county-readme.txt.
Much of the work for this upgrade was due to the efforts of student developer Mark Christiansen, Computer Engineering.
Questions? Problems? Please let us know at kansas-wdl@ksu.edu.
Mary Knapp, Weather Data Library/Mesonet
mknapp@ksu.edu
Chip Redmond, Weather Data Library/Mesonet
christopherredmond@ksu.edu
Dan Regier, Weather Data Library/Mesonet
regierdp@ksu.edu
Tags: weather