Automated Data Plotter

This application dynamically generates many types of graphs. These graphs are derived from processing of various data sources done by the IEM. Please feel free to use these generated graphics in whatever way you wish. Reset App. The IEM Explorer application offers a simplified frontend to some of these autoplots.


First, select a chart type::

Second, select specific chart options::

Select plot extent type:
Select statistic to plot:
Overlay values on map?
Plot by UGC (Counties/Parishes/Zones) or Polygons?
Plot County/Parish borders on polygon summary maps?
Select start year (only for year count/average):
Select end year (only for year count/average) (inclusive):
Start DateTime UTC:
(YYYY/mm/dd HH24MI)
End DateTime UTC:
(YYYY/mm/dd HH24MI)
Select WFO: (when appropriate)
 
Select State: (when appropriate)
Select FEMA Region:
Select Watch/Warning Phenomena Type:
Select Watch/Warning Significance Level:
Color Ramp:
  Reverse Colormap?
Specify an interval for the colorbar to use instead of dynamic. (optional)
Image Pixel Size @100 DPI
Image Resolution (DPI) (50 to 500)
Select Output Format:

Plot Description:

This application has a considerable and likely confusing amount of configuration options. The biggest source of the confusion is the interplay between the statistic chosen and the dates/times provided. This table summarizes that interplay.
StatisticUsesApplication
Days Since Start/End Date Time This plots the number of "days" since the last issuance of a given headline between the start and end date times that you provide. The concept of "days" is 24 hour periods.
Days With 1+ Events Start/End Date Time For a central time zone calendar date, this totals the days with at least one issuance event.
Last Year Start/End Date Time This plots the most recent year of issuance for a given warning type.
Most Frequent Hour Start/End Date Time This plots only works for UGC summarization. It attempts to plot the hour of the day with the most frequent number of events issued. Not that for long-fuse warnings, these type of plot is likely ill-defined.
Total Count Start/End Date Time This plots the total number of events between the start and end date time.
Year Average Start/End Year This plots the average number of events between the inclusive start and end year. The caveat is that it uses the actual found time domain of warnings within those years to compute a yearly average. So if you pick a year period between 2005 to 2010 and no warnings were issued in 2005, it would then use 2006 to 2010 to compute the yearly average.
Year Count Start Year This plots the number of events for a given year. A year is defined as the calendar year in US Central Time.
Yearly Min/Avg/Max Count bounded... Start/End Date Time
Start/End Year		 This plots the min/avg/max number of events per year between the given dates. For example, you could produce a plot of the average number of Tornado Warnings during June. Please note that only the average plot works when summarizing by polygons.

In general, it will produce a map of either a single NWS Weather Forecast Office (WFO) or for a specified state. For warning types that are issued with polygons, you can optionally plot heatmaps of these products. Please be careful when selecting start and end dates to ensure you are getting the plot you want. There are likely some combinations here that will produce a broken image symbol. If you find such a case, please email us the link to this page that shows the broken image!

Storm Based Warning polygons were not official until 1 October 2007, so if you generate plots for years prior to this date, you may notice polygons well outside the County Warning Area bounds. There was no enforcement of these unofficial polygons to stay within CWA bounds.

This app can be very slow, so please let it grind away as sometimes it will take 3-5 minutes to generate a map :(

Based on a sampling of recent timings for this application, plot generation time has averaged 4 seconds. Hold on for the plot is generating now!


View Data (as csv)   Download as Excel  
If you notice plotting issues with the image above, please do let us know by providing the URL address currently shown by your web browser.

IEM Daily Features using this plot

The IEM Daily Features found on this website often utilize plots found on this application. Here is a listing of features referencing this plot type.