Today's Task List

1. Use IEM Explorer to locate nearby stations.
   The IEM website collects data from many different observing networks. Knowing the closest station to your location of interest is half the battle of using the website. The primary stations you want to know are the closest airport station (in ASOS network) and closest long-term climate location (in COOP network).
2. Use Climodat Reports to find monthly precip totals.
   Given that you found a nearby long term climate site, you can use that site to find a report table of monthly precipitation along with the climatology.
3. Consult AgWeather Mainpage for growing season plot options.
   The IEM has a number of applications that generate maps/plots of totals over a variable period of days.
4. View Iowa County Soil Temperature Maps
   This page now includes daily GFS forecast plots going out two weeks.
5. Search for NWS Warnings
   You can search for warnings by counties / points and drill down to get more details about this warning including damage reports and the raw warning text.
6. Generate a Custom Wind Rose for Ames.
   These informative plots are useful to illustrate prevailing wind speed and direction over a period of time.
7. View Archived Webcam Imagery
   These images are a gold mine for quick visual assessment of conditions back on a date of your choice.
8. Create a Map of High Res Precip Estimates
   Often big rainfall events are highly isolated within a given county. You can generate maps of these events for a given date or range of dates.

The bottom line, email me any and all questions, problems, and/or complaints! akrherz@iastate.edu