The Historical Weather Data Dashboard provides a simple way to view historical weather observations. The dashboard gives easy access to a deep history of weather records around them. The data is presented in dashboard form to give you the most optimal weather data consumption available in the business world today.
If you then need to download the data, or retrieve the weather history using a Weather API, the Weather Data Services page offers access to daily, hourly and even sub-hourly historical weather data.
Why a weather dashboard?
If you work in a modern-day company, you probably have been exposed to dashboards. Every imaginable piece of data about your company has probably been put onto graphs, charts, exploding widgets and much more. Dashboards were sold as the way to disseminate vast stores of information to a wide audience where they can consume complex data in just a few glances. Understanding this data makes us smarter and allows us to make better decisions. Often this is sold to these companies under the name of Business Intelligence.
Have you ever noticed that this technology almost never reaches you in your daily, personal life? There is no easy way for you to explore data about your life or your environment. If these dashboards are so useful, why not introduce them to the masses about everything in your life? So we did.
How to view weather history data
To start using the dashboard, open the link: https://www.visualcrossing.com/weather-history
Historical Dashboard
Any user can enter in their location and choose from historical dates back to the 1970s (depending on the weather stations) There are quick buttons to show you weather last week, last month, last year or year to date. Choosing ‘Year to date’ for ‘Herndon, VA’ quickly gives us a dashboard loaded with weather and climate data for my neighborhood.
We can quickly see our high and low temperatures, deviation from the normal, total rainfall, max rainfall on a day, maximum sustained winds and much more. The individual graphs allow us to quickly see the entire year-to-date and the details of any given day in this graph.
I can see the exact day that I had large amounts of rain, my totals for year and how frequent I get large rainfall days. These same details are available for all weather variables.
Accurate weather data
One of the keys to the dashboard is starting with a great data source and methods for aggregation of the data. The Weather Dashboard automatically sends off each of my dates to a server where it is joined and interpolated for accuracy against National Weather Service data. The data is significantly better in accuracy than a simple join based on address or zip code, it is interpolated and intelligently constructed by data from multiple weather stations as needed. In fact, the dashboard even displays the weather stations it uses around your location for data.
All of the locations in blue contribute data on a distance-interpolated basis to our location shown in the larger red point. If your location is between stations you will get significantly more accurate data than other sites offer by simply regurgitating the single, nearest-station data. All weather variables are analyzed for accuracy and completeness.In addition to a highly consumable dashboard the system offers the ability to see and download all data that was used in construction of the dashboard.
Weather answers
The goal of the dashboard is to allow any users to answer a myriad of questions they may have about their location or a location they may visit or need to know more about. Here are some questions you may have found yourself asking:
- how much rain did we get this year?
- is this heat wave we had last week normal?
- what date was that storm that damaged our house?
- what is the normal temperature where we are going on vacation?
The questions are many and with the proper data and dashboard, finding answers is quite simple. Data and dashboards can have a major role to play in the dissemination of every day information for all users. As data becomes more widely available, even simple end users will have the power to make better decisions on their own.
Historical weather data and weather forecast data
If this has left your wanting more weather data, the Visual Crossing Weather Data platform offers additional data offerings, including hourly records, advanced statistical summaries and business level filtering. In addition, the Weather API offers the ability to access the same data directly from your own application or system.