Jamie Simpson's DDN Weather Column -- April 18, 2007

Some of the most frequent phone calls and emails I receive are requests for weather data from past days. Whether it is because you had some storm damage and need the information to help an insurance claim, or are just curious about conditions on a certain day, this data is now fairly easy to find. All you have to do is hop on the Internet.

Let¹s start with an easy request. Perhaps you want to know how much rainfall fell in a certain location on April 14. We will head to The Weather Underground, a company which houses all the stored historical weather data from our Weathervision 7 network. The website is www.wunderground.com.

Once there look at the features near the top of the page and click on the ³Personal Weather Stations tab. Then scroll down to the Browse all stations contributing to the Weather Underground network area and select Ohio, then click on the View tab below it. You will see a list of all the Weather Underground personal weather stations in the Buckeye state. Pick the location closest to you and click on the station ID on the left.

What will come up is a series of graphs for the current day. Included are temperature and dew point, barometric pressure, wind direction, speed and gusts and rainfall. If you continue to scroll down you will then see daily and monthly statistics, and below that is the detailed data.

Depending on how frequently the station updates to the Weather Underground web site, information may be every ten minutes or every hour. All the above information will be there so you can pinpoint when winds gusted over 50 mph, or when rain started, or even when the temperature fell below 32, for example.

But what if you don't want the current day? Scroll back up near the top of that page and you will find a place to select any day you want. You can go back through the last seven years, but keep in mind data will only be available as far back as the individual station has been registered with The Weather Underground.

If you are looking for storm damage data, head to the website for the Storm Prediction Center: www.spc.noaa.gov Click on the Storm Reports link on the left. You will find maps of the current and previous day's storm reports, and if you click on one of them it will show you the locations of what has been reported followed by a detailed list of the reports. If you want a day from the past, just below there you will find a spot to put in any date, and the data for that date will appear.

That data is available back to June 1999.