Climatestations.com was initially created to present graphically on a year-to-year basis, the remarkably lengthy and 99.6 percent intact daily maximum/minimum temperature history for Minneapolis-St. Paul MN, dating back to 1820, now 204 years in length.  Also included, subject to their availability, were depictions of MSP daily precipitation, snowfall, and snow depth observations. 

From this start, thirteen additional domestic stations, all with climatic histories at least 70 years in length have been added over time (New York Central Park, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, Las Vegas, Miami, Seattle; in 2021, Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Nashville; and in 2023, Washington DC).  With so much data from so many stations being presented, the focus is necessarily graphical, and the goal is to construct the individual-year visualizations, as well as others (described below), to be interesting and informative.

Other climate variables, such as wind (mean vector, mean scalar; extremes) and relative humidities, etc.,) have been introduced, one important graphic-type being “hour-by-month climograms”, portraying given stations’ diurnal/seasonal variabilities (means, percent frequencies, extremes, etc.)  for various parameters, individually, represented on single-page grid-layouts analogous to topographic maps.  Further graphics’-type additions have been annual time series plots (for example, those of annual mean temperatures or annual total precipitation), cumulative season-to-date totals of precipitation, and probability density distribution charts (e.g., those of annual total precipitation). The selection of parameters, kinds of analyses, and graphics’ types utilized are always subject to expansion, assuming the proposed additions are considered novel, worthwhile and interesting.

The charts can be perused by teachers, students, planners, decision makers, and general weather enthusiasts – for any specified purpose(s), or simply for their own sake. As mentioned above, the primary focus is visualization, but raw supporting data are usually available upon request.

Charts pertaining to the current year in question are updated on a semi-weekly to semi-monthly basis. Public data sources are utilized to acquire the raw data, with attributions given, and generation of the assorted in climate statistics and creation of their graphical depictions done on an original, “in-house” basis.

Most of the traffic (~70%) to Climatestations.com comes from domestic visitors, but a few foreign stations have been added as well, such as Helsinki, Finland, and Oxford UK). Data for Oxford extends in some cases back the 18th century.