Online Resources

United States Drought Monitor. http://drought.unl.edu/dm

www.wrh.noaa.gov, United States National Weather Service. Locate the weather stations closest to your site and find out their elevations. Download data from those stations that are most like your site.

The following employ their own meteorologists as well as using NOAA’s and other resources:

www.wunderground.com, “Weather Underground.” User friendly interface, various maps, also local weather (home-station) listings … so might be
closer to you than the “official” regional weather.

www.accuweather.com, employ own meteorologists…
15 day forecast.

www.weather.com “The Weather Channel” website.

Arizona specific
Arizona Meteorological Network. ag.arizona.edu/azmet. Evaporation rates, prevailing winds, soil temperatures, and minimum/maximum temperatures are listed for various sites. For other states contact your local agricultural extension service for similar meteorological networks.

Rainlog. www.rainlog.org. Community-based rainfall monitoring. Rainlog is the place where citizens can help track regional rainfall so that water managers, drought planners, weather reporters and scientists can get a better picture of precipitation patterns across the Southwest U.S. Better information on precipitation patterns can help us make better decisions regarding the management of our natural resources, especially water.

Miscellaneous

The U.S. National Forest Service compiles data for remote weather stations, though the data is not as comprehensive nor standardized as the above two resources. However, for rural sites a Forest Service weather station may be closer to a given site than one monitored by other agencies.

Local airports, since they collect and record climatic data.

Rain gauge from a hardware or garden store with which to begin keeping precipitation records for your site.