Climate and Weather Resources

For the State of Virginia there are tons of helpful climate and weather resources.

The National Centers for Environmental Information, a subset of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offers a wide variety of historical and present climate data. You can get data by the month, historical data for normals, wind data, and data at a glance here

If you find that there is an overwhelming amount of data there and would like to start smaller, you can find a really cool tool for looking at different parameters (average temp, precipitation, drought index, and more) by state here .



Here is what that graph looks like for average temps in Virginia during the month of May from 1970 to present.

You can also down load your data in spreadsheet form. 

Another resource for drought information by state is drought.gov. This website is very intuitive and it's easy to find drought information by state or for a more specific location, as well as drought response plans and associated organizations like the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. To see the drought conditions for Virginia go here. Drought.gov also allows you to download more specific data in spreadsheet form. 

Of interest to Virginians is storm event data, as hurricane seasons can be severe. You can search the NOAA database of storm events by state or area here.  

It can also be fun to poke around the US Global Change Research Program's website. Virginia falls into the Southeast region, and if you go to this page there will be tons of helpful charts and studies on climate change factors and data, and graphics like the one below. 

For current and predicated data for more specific locations, there are Remote Automatic Weather Stations that report data from various locations.  RAWS data includes precipitation, RH, temperatire, solar radiation, wind, and more. You can find the data for the Virginia RAWS stations here. 

Other websites that I find useful for tracking local weather are wunderground.com and intellicast.com. Both of these websites provide real time, past and future satellite and radar with live action. This is useful if you are out doing field work and don't want to be caught in a storm. 

Mapping Virginia with Google MyMaps

Today I sat down in hopes of creating a helpful map of some biologically significant areas, either from a endangered species viewpoint or from a conservation viewpoint. I have done a little fiddling around in the past with ArcGIS Online and was curious to see how MyMaps compared.

For starters, MyMaps is easier to use if you have never used any sort of GIS program before because you have probably used Google products. Most people at this point use Google Maps on their phones and computers, so this is just an extension of what they are already familiar with. I think usage might increase among new users faster with MyMaps than with ArcGIS because there is less of an intimidation factor.

Drawbacks included less accessible layers. ArcGis has a catalog of easy to access and try out layers for both basemaps and additional layering. The amount of maps a user has access to is based upon the libraries associated with the associated account organization, but even the public accounts - those not linked to specific organization accounts, have access to a wider variety of base maps and layers than I could find on MyMaps. This makes it harder to, in my case, find a layer that has all of the public lands and conservation area boundaries and layer it over the map that still has roads and topo data. Another drawback was that I was unable to import shape files or any of the other commonly used file types. The list of possible file types you can integrate is very small. I wanted to import some data from the IUCN RedList of Endangered Species, but instead I had to freehand a polygon to show a certain species' range. That's fine for an approximation but not great if you want precise data. Also, there are some significant places that still aren't on Google Maps including some special management areas that no one drives to often. If I was using this for driving directions in cities this would be a great tool but for conservation data, maybe not so much.

I think there are benefits for a super user friendly map. I was able to get in and start using it immediately, where as ArcGIS takes some learning on the front end to use at all.

Unpacking Ecology Slideshow