HINTS ON OBTAINING U.S. SURFACE STATION DATA (DAILY or SUMMARY OF THE MONTH)  ARCHIVED AT NCDC UNDER THE "Locate Weather Observation Station Record" link:

WARNING:  if you are not on campus, be sure you are logged in with your VPN Client - this will allow you access to the data without having to pay

(1)  Go to this National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) link:  :http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/stationlocator.html

(2)  On this page look for the header that says:  State/Division/County/City and click on it to find the State, City, Station , etc. you want through a series of menu selections.   You can then locate the stations you want by going to a state, a city, or right to the Station Name (if you know it) 

OR

(3) Use the SEARCH box after selecting one of the choices if you have a specific state, city, station name,  lat/lon,, etc. in mind (e.g. select the button for Station Name */City* , then enter Tombstone in the box and click SEARCH)

(For example, I entered Tombstone and was taken right there -- so you could enter the Station Names right from the Sellers & Green Arizona Climate book, or you could search by state or by city to find the all the stations closest to that city.)

 It will give you a Period of Record when it lists the stations, but in many cases the records go back much further than this original listing of the record, because there may be co-op stations that have longer records.

 For example, if on the Tombstone station page (which lists two stations with that name), you scroll down and click on Get DAILY DATA, you'll be taken to a page that lets you select the years you want data for and it shows that the Tombstone station goes all the way back to 1893 because it includes the coop station (ID 028619 (see this info at the bottom of the page:)

COOP ID	WBAN ID	Station Name	State	Period of Record (mm/yyyy)
028619		TOMBSTONE	AZ	07/1893 to 07/2001

For Surface Data station records, once you get to the City or Station you want, you will be able to select from many choices of information to get to the data files, look for the link to: Access Digital ASCII Files: 

EXAMPLE:

Station List

Access Digital ASCII Data For This Group of Stations.
Select individual station below to access data for that station.
NCDC May Not Have Received Any Data for Some of these Stations.

Station Name - City, State or Province, Country - County	Period of Record		COOP ID	WBAN	Call Sign /ICS	WMO ID	Type
Tombstone - Tombstone, AZ, United States - Cochise County	01 Jul 1948	Present	028619	.	.	.	COOP ABC
Tombstone - Tombstone, AZ, United States - Cochise County			.	93190	.	.	A

Surface
DAT INV DOC 3200 -Cooperative Summary Of The Day
DAT INV DOC SOD -Daily Surface Data (TD3200/3210 combined)
DAT INV DOC 3220 -Summary Of The Month (SOM) Cooperative

(The DAT files contain the actual data in ASCII form)

When you click on a DAT link for Daily Surface Data, you will be taken to an accessing data selection screen:

Accessing data selection screen for
Surface Data, Daily - US & some non-US

For data you can import into a spreadsheet for a specified time period, select the Advanced Options and by-pass the "Simplified Options."  You'll be taken to the Select Meteorological Element panel where you can select which element or elements (variables) of the available dataset you want to download.

When you click on DAT for the Summary of the Month, you'll be taken directly to the Select Meteorological Element panel where you can select which element or elements (variables) of the available dataset you want to download.

You then select the element/ variable(s) you want, the range of years you want, and the output format (space- or comma-delimited format  is recommended), click CONTINUE and proceed to follow the directions (enter you email address, etc.) and submit your request.  It will come back with a URL where you can go to access the data file and you will be notified by email when the file is ready.

 When you get notification that your file is ready, select the txt file (ASCII Form) and click on that and you'll see your data on the web in text form, delimited by commas.

 To make it usable:

• Select the entire data file (under Edit, Select All on your browser window) and then paste it into MS Word and save it as a Text only file.

• Then open up Excel, start a new page in Excel, click on:      Data ==>Get External Data ==>Import Text file

• Then find where you've saved the data txt file, select the file and click on Import

• A text Import Wizard box will open that asks what your original data type is.  Select "Delimited" and click Next. 

• Then the next box will ask you what delimiters your data contains:  Select "Comma" and you should see the data rearrange itself in nice columns in the sample data window in the box. 

• After that, click Next again and then Finish, and you data should properly appear in Excel lined up in columns.

 From the web-based file (when it is processed) you can just cut and paste the data into Excel or some other spreadsheet.