The severe weather data inventory: a geospatial database of severe weather data at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

The Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI) at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) provides user access to archives of several datasets critical to the detection and evaluation of severe weather. These datasets include:

• NEXRAD Level-III point features describing general storm structure, hail, mesocyclone and tornado signatures

• National Weather Service Storm Events Database

• National Weather Service Local Storm Reports collected from storm spotters

• National Weather Service Warnings

• Lightning strikes from Vaisala's National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN)

SWDI stores these datasets in a spatial relational database that allows for convenient searching and subsetting. Data access is available from the NCDC web site, URL-based (REST) Web Services and FTP. The data may be saved in a variety of formats, including plain text, XML, KMZ (Google Earth) and Shapefile.