Weather Data Information

Weather Data Source.   The weather data was obtained from the following five sources: (1) The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), (2) COOP Stations, (3) Meteorological Aviation Report (METAR), (4) Crop Weather Program Weather Station Network at Corpus Christi, Texas, and (5) Beaumont/Eagle Lake research weather stations 

Data Quality Control.  A vigorous program was used to check for data errors and estimate missing data points. A linear interpolation method is used to estimate ten or fewer consecutive missing data points for the following weather measurements: temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, and ET_0. Since rainfall does not follow any pattern, missing rainfall data will be flagged as missing. For ten days to 4 months of consecutive missing data points, we use historic average weather data and adjust it proportionally with the current average for the adjacent period.  Historic average is calculated based on past 30 years (minimum of 5 years) of data by excluding invalid and missing data points.  

Automatic Weather Data Update.  Computer programs automatically retrieves weather data from the above five data sources for all available weather stations, pass the retrieved data through the quality control program and store the filtered data in our weather database.  The NOAA weather data is usually 1-2 months old when it is available to us. The remaining four sources provide near real-time weather data with just one to three days of delay .

Station Filter.  Active: Display only stations that contains at least some weather data for the past six months. Inactive: Display only stations that does not contain any weather data for the past six months.  All: Display all stations that contains any weather data.