The first field is date and

Frank — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:45:44 +0000

The first field is date and time. The 2nd to the last (penultimate) field is date and the last field is "hour".... So, more or less, they just split the first column into two columns and put them on the right.

..... maybe you are asking about the ICAO table, which you probably are. It is the elevation of the ICAO station.

What does the last field

pr0gr4mm3r — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:42:15 +0000

What does the last field represent?

I was going to guess why the

Frank — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:41:57 +0000

I was going to guess why the sizes are different, but there are too many possibilities....

You will notice the name of the file... It doesn't include non-USA ICAOs. But, if you want those, let me know. I don't know that the larger file is as clean as this one....

CU,
Frank

PS--- I changed the extension to txt from csv so I could upload it.

Glad to help. I already had

pr0gr4mm3r — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:27:53 +0000

Glad to help.

I already had a table of 2,172 USA ICAOs along with their lats, longs, and elevations.

Hmmm...When I import my station list from the XML file in my previous post, I only get 2,009 records. Can you attach your list of 2,172 stations? I wonder which ones they aren't including.

Amazing! It works

Frank — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:15:16 +0000

Amazing!

It works perfectly.

I already had a table of 2,172 USA ICAOs along with their lats, longs, and elevations. I'm not sure that they all have weather outputing capability, but I've looked at perhaps 25 and they have worked. Some seem to have more elements than others.

Also have a table of "all"(?) ICAOs... perhaps 24,400. Not real sure of the value of that, but fwiw.

Thanks to you, I can now assemble this thing. I was thinking that I had to find a formula that dealt specifically with ICAOs. After reading your words above, it struck me that ICAOs are beside the point.

Again, thanks again!
Frank

I am working on a php

pr0gr4mm3r — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:53:27 +0000

I am working on a php routine that returns the nearest icao code (like "KMCI") from a set of coordinates, but that I don't know the right way to do that. I am sure lots of others have done that already, and I am hoping to take advantage of their hard work. That way you could get the appropriate weather data by lat/lon rather than have to know the icao code for access.

I can help you there. Visit this link to get a list of all weather stations:

http://www.weather.gov/xml/current_obs/index.xml

I use the SimpleXMLElement class to parse the file and insert it into the database. Let me know if you want a code sample for that. I have mine written up in a framework, so it won't run as a standalone script.

Now for the part of querying for the closest station. Check out this query from the weather project I'm working on:

SELECT *, SQRT(POW(69.1 * (latitude - $lat), 2) + POW(69.1 * ($lon - longitude) * COS(latitude / 57.3 ), 2 )) AS distance FROM Stations ORDER BY distance ASC LIMIT 1

Set the $lat and $lon variables to the location where you are trying to find the closest station, and the closest one will be returned. I will admit that I had to Google for this query, I didn't write it myself.

The precipitation source is

Frank — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:12:22 +0000

The precipitation source is working well. I did send a request for the csv file via the url link and a file was returned. I then imported it into mySQL and it is available.

The site is:

National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center
Interactive Snow Information

(It includes all forms of precipitation as far as I can tell.)

http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/interactive/html/graph.html?station=KMCI is a good start, you can enter any icao from there.

From that URL, you can access 24 different outputs, which are either graphic or text. The one I will use is #13, which is a csv file.

There is quite a bit of information on that page.

I am working on a php routine that returns the nearest icao code (like "KMCI") from a set of coordinates, but that I don't know the right way to do that. I am sure lots of others have done that already, and I am hoping to take advantage of their hard work. That way you could get the appropriate weather data by lat/lon rather than have to know the icao code for access.

Here are the four lines of

pr0gr4mm3r — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:54:55 +0000

Here are the four lines of code I use to get SS & SR. I assume they are always available in PHP 5(?)

Sweet, thanks for posting those functions. I just looked those up on php.net, and yes, they are available in PHP 5+.

Where did you find that CSV data? Is there a page that describes it?

You know... I got to looking

Frank — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:35:49 +0000

You know... I got to looking at the link you provided and found something that may work at: (the link is for Kansas City area)

http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/interactive/html/graph.html?station=KMCI&w=60...

This allows you to set begin and end times and a csv file will be returned.

We shall see...

Rather than forecasted data,

Frank — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:00:33 +0000

Rather than forecasted data, I would like to find recent past data for precipitation. E.G. 1" rain in past 6 hours... 2" snow if past 24 hours, etc...

I've looked everywhere I can think of and have had no luck. It would seem that that information should be readily available and it probably is, but I just haven't looked under the right rock.

Thanks again for your interest.

Frank