Help-ROMAN Station Weather

Station Weather Display

ROMAN has been designed for use by fire weather professionals and others requiring access to current fire weather conditions around the nation. Comments and suggestions for improvement are encouraged and can be sent to meteo-mesowest@lists.utah.edu.

The Station Weather Display provides access to weather information in three panels:

Site Information (left margin)
- Basic site information is provided as well as a locator map with a link to a topographic map for the immediate vicinity
- Other site links:
  - Help: link to this help page
  - MesoWest: link to MesoWest home page
  - The user may toggle between English/metric units or GMT/local time
  - 2 Week Summary: Selected variables can be displayed over a 2 week period for either current or past conditions
  - Past Data: past data can be accessed; the length of record varies considerably from station to station. A form to request larger amounts of past data is also found on the Past Data page.
  - Data Quality: provides a graphical summary over the past 30 days of the deviation of temperature, dew point, and pressure from the 3-D linear regression estimate for the observation. Large consistent deviations may reflect instrument errors.
  - Station Information: Additional metadata, where available, is provided including Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) information
  - Station Status: a graph displaying the number of observations per day for the past month. This is useful in determining the reliability of a station.
  - Restrictions: Limitations on the use and redistribution of the data are discussed.
  - Data in Spreadsheet Format: data can be downloaded in Excel format for easy manipulation.
Tabular Summary (top of page)
- Current values and maximum/minimum values since midnight and in the 24 hours since the latest observation are displayed.
- Summaries of total precipitation since local midnight and in the 24 hours since the latest observation are provided when relevant.
- All available weather observations for the past day are provided in a table with the most recent observation at the top of the listing.
- An estimate of the quality of the data is provided. See the quality control help page for further information.
- If the station has not reported within the last 24 hours, then this frame will display a list of stations within a 25 mile (changeable) radius that have reported data at least once in the last 90 days. The stations are ordered by proximity to the original station.
Graphical Summary (bottom of page)
The user may switch between time series or hodographs over periods from 12 hours to 30 days.
- Time Series (default): Depending on the sensors available at the station, up to 6 panels may be displayed:
  - Temperature, dew point temperature, relative humidity, soil temperature, water temperature, road temperature
  - Wind speed, direction from which wind is blowing, and gusts
  - Pressure (either station pressure, altimeter setting, or sea level pressure)
  - Precipitation. Stations that report precipitation only during precipitation events will not have a precipitation plot during dry periods. Those stations that report a running total, will always plot precipitation.
  - Solar radiation
- Hodograph: The hodograph shows wind direction and speed over a period of time on a polar graph. Beware of the following:
  - The hodograph does not indicate how many times a particular wind vector was reported in the given period (e.g. If a station reports "calm" several times in the reporting perid, only one point at the center of the graph will appear.)
  - The hodograph's precision is limited to the precision of the wind data. Those stations that report wind direction in tens of degrees will become evident in the hodograph.
  - For stations in the NWS/FAA network, reports of "variable" wind direction are not plotted.

Notes:

The page reloads every 10 minutes in order to display the most current conditions available.
When displaying past data, the page will not refresh, nor will it provide a list of nearby stations if no data is available for the requested period.
The middle frame bar can be moved up or down to see a larger portion of the tabular or time series frames.

Other Help Pages

Current Status
Main Help
Surface Data Plots
Station Location Maps
Station Weather Display
Current Weather Summary
Fire Weather 24-Hour Trend Monitor
24-Hour Trend Monitor (point of interest)
Fire Weather Monitor
Max/Min Summaries
Precipitation Monitor
Precipitation Summary
Weather Near Fires
GCA Active Fires Maps
Quick Links
Quality Control
Printing Help

MesoWest Department of Meteorology