Weather Stations Observation Data

Synoptic Weather Observation Data

FireRisk can retrieve weather data from weather stations from Synoptic, a robust and fully scalable commercial data service for accessing a database of real-time and historical surface-based weather observations. This network provides the richest set of weather station data in real-time. It requires a token from Synoptic to use this as the source through an API that uses a simple HTTP call to extract data in seconds for weather station locations across California. There are 5,212 weather stations included in California providing a very detailed spatial coverage that allows comparing and validating data from weather models. The stations can be filtered from the Settings option by:

• Network (SCE, SDG&E, PG&E, RAWS, and NWS-FAA)

• CAL FIRE Unit

• Wind values over a certain threshold

The weather station data is viewable within the FireRisk application with arrows showing wind speed and direction.  It also can be displayed by the difference between the predicted and the observed weather at the weather station. A link in every station tooltip provides access to the last three days of observations from the NWS.

Tools are available to query and retrieve the station data. Especially noteworthy is the capability to compare the Wind Speed and Direction, Observed vs. Predicted, graphically and numerically.

Comparison of Observed and Predicted Wind speed and Direction with the FireRisk Identify tool.