This is a dump of Iowa Environmental Mesonet wind reports from
ASOS weather stations over the CONUS. The columns are:
utc_valid - Observation Timestamp in UTC <24hour>
id - 3 Character Site ID
lon - Longitude (east) of station
lat - Latitude (north) of station
wind_speed_kts - 2 minute wind speed knots
wind_direction - 2 minute wind direction (degrees north)
wind_gust_kts - Peak 5 second gust within past two minutes knots
peak_wind_gust_kts - METAR peak gust in knots
peak_wind_drct - METAR peak wind direction of gust
utc_peak_wind_time - METAR time of peak wind report in UTC
ts_present - 1 (True) or 0 (False) was TS reported in METAR
METAR reports can contain the option 'PK WND' reports, which sometimes
contain the wind direction and time of the peak wind report.
Observation counts:
2007 27,070,942
2008 28,126,282
2009 31,054,147
2010 34,034,277
2011 35,383,407
2012 34,807,488
2013 36,294,296
2014 37,695,554
2015 39,251,900
2016 38,424,164
2017 41,209,739
2018 40,256,098
2019 40,908,363
2020 41,215,894
2021 41,144,663
Contact: daryl herzmann akrherz@iastate.edu
Updates:
25 Sep 2019 - Was thunder (TS) reported in the METAR added to files.
13 Dec 2022 - Dumped years 2019-2021
Questions & Answers
1) Why is the 2018 file so much larger?
A) Unknown difference with the gzip compression used. 2018 did not
compress as well for some reason. The extracted sizes are comparable
2722509400 Jul 31 14:30 2017.csv
2654530361 Jul 31 14:30 2018.csv
2) Why doesn't your database have wind gusts that were found in Local Storm Reports
attributed to ASOS stations?
A) ASOS is a general term used to classify automated stations from a number of
different networks. In general, FAA/NWS ASOS sites have the ability to send
SPECI reports that contain more detailed wind gust information. Non-federal sites
often only send scheduled reports once per hour or maybe 3 times per hour. Thus
they may not report peak winds fully. A NWS Office may be manually querying the
station or getting more detailed wind observations by other means.