Recent Improvements to the Access of Mesonet Observations via MesoWest

MesoWest continues to be an important resource for the collection and dissemination of surface meteorological observations from over 30,000 real-time reporting stations located throughout North America, in addition to another 20,000 inactive platforms with historical data. Traditional access to these observations has been through publically-available web products developed by the University of Utah, National Weather Service (NWS) Western Region, and other entities. MesoWest also serves as a provider to the Meteorological Automated Data Ingest System (MADIS), disseminating real-time observations from mesonets not previously disseminated to MADIS.

Recent improvements in data access have been deployed via MesoWest/SynopticLabs API services, allowing developers to integrate surface observational data into their own applications for effective communication of the data to their users. Inclusive within the API services are improved data check algorithms to help developers interpret and identify potentially incorrect observations. Improvements in derived measurements and statistics, including the simplification of precipitation data, are also described. These new developments are demonstrated through several examples of high-impact weather events from the previous year.