[Bldg-sim] A digital tour of the Internet for weather data in a remote location in the Andes: The Sequel

[Joe Huang]

People might remember that I posted a somewhat whimsical note on Nov. 29 about my 
experiences searching the Weather Underground web site for weather data for a remote ski 
area in the Andes, with the conclusion that I could kludge together a working weather file 
by taking the temperature and humidity data from a PWS (Personal Weather Station) at the 
ski area, the wind data from another nearby PWS, and the cloud data from the nearest 
official weather station on the outskirts of Santiago (search the archives if you want to 
read  the details and see the colorful maps).

After hearing no response for more than a month, I  received an e-mail two days ago 
affirming the client needed this weather file. After refreshing my memory by reading the 
old e-mails, I got to work and discovered yet more surprises.  (1) The client told me that 
the actual building site is not at this ski area, but another mountainous location on the 
border with Argentina several hundred kilometers  further south!  They mentioned 
Farellones just because of the higher probability of a weather station at the ski area 
(and they were right).  (2) When I searched the Weather Underground web site, many of the 
PWS, including Farellones, had disappeared! Luckily, I had the station name from before 
and found that I could still retrieve the data using that station name.

The end result was that after spending 1-2 hours, I was able to construct the weather as I 
had described on Nov. 29. In fact, when I plotted the data, as I always do before sending 
them out, they had a real look of veirisimilitude :-)  See below:

My main takeaways from this experience are  (1) if you find useful data from Weather 
Underground, download it promptly because it might go away at any time, but (2) if a 
station disappears from the Wundermap the data might still be on the Web and retrievable.

Joe


-- 
Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"

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