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"The quality of your products is second to none."

— C. Brian Batey

"Thanks Tim for your quick response (we like that at FedEx) about our Professional Versions! As we're a 24/7 operation, we're look forward to augmenting our present weather system with Digital Atmosphere."

— Mel Bradley, FedEx Operations

"Wow. Your books are incredibly technical and useful. I consider myself a very amateur weather watcher and feel that I am already ahead of the curve. Thank you."

— Terry W. Taylor

"The NEXRAD support is truly awesome and easy to use – and the ‘other’ feature just really tops it off. This is about my sixth email tonight – the other five being to other spotters in the area telling them they just have to download Digital Atmosphere and give it a serious going over."

— David Cashion

"I'm really looking forward to the next phase of Digital Atmosphere Workstation. I'm sure it will be as excellent as all your other products."

— Simon Keeling
Weather Consultancy Services, UK

"I run and manage a number of festival type events and Digital Atmosphere is able to produce charts that I can use for normal weather forecasting with a fair degree of accuracy and in particular wind speed and direction that is crucial to many of events."

— Robert Connolly, GI7IVX

"The archive data arrived today. WOW! What an amazing set of data! Thanks again for all the extras that you included as well!"

— Bryan Bollman, IA

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— Anonymous

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— Ken Simosko, NWS, Pocatello

"This new version is even better than the older version which was awesome! Your programming skills and met knowledge amaze me!"

— Chris Kincaid


HISTORICAL WEATHER DATABASE SYSTEM
1930 - 2012

INSURANCE · UNIVERSITY · RESEARCH · AVIATION · ENERGY SERVICES

ARGON is an economical USB external hard drive loaded with billions of key weather records for North America going back to 1930. It's designed for businesses and universities that need the complete North American weather record on demand. Using the power of mySQL, you can run statistical analyses, find extremes, averages, and frequencies, and export queries in METAR and spreadsheet form. All data has been unified into a common format and is searchable by latitude/longitude, WMO, ICAO, FAA, and WBAN identifier. This ensures maximum compatibility for your projects. And ARGON is economical -- obtaining all of this data from the National Climatic Data Center would involve tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of processing time.

How ARGON was developed
Since 1997 Weather Graphics has been collecting and warehousing tremendous amounts of weather data. Our primary goal has always been to adapt the data for operational use, avoiding complicated or arcane storage formats. This is a significant problem when dealing with NCDC, NCAR, and other agencies, which use thousands of formats ranging from ASCII tables to packed records and compressed binary files. These cannot be imported into spreadsheets without custom coding. Weather Graphics has been interested in creating a universal superdatabase for quite some time, but only in 2005 did consumer technology allow this. Development work involved the processing of billions of weather records, 3000 lines of source code, and 400 hours of processing time on Pentium 4 computers.

MYSQL command line queries
With only one single query, here are just some of the things you can do:
  • Find the date/time of the highest 700 mb wind speed ever recorded at Minneapolis
  • See the average temperature for September 1985 in Pocatello, Idaho
  • Show all instances of winds above 60 mph at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
  • Determine the number of hours the visibility was below 2 miles at DFW International Airport in 1990-2005
  • View the dates and times that the mercury was below 0°F in 1982 at Cleveland
  • Show all observations between 42N 100W and 44N 95W at 0400 UTC on July 8, 1996
  • Show all temperature highs and lows for October 12, 2004

    Types of weather elements available
  • Surface hourly data - Year, month, day, hour, latitude and longitude (to nearest hundredth), WBAN (5-digit), WMO code (5-digit), FAA identifier (3-letter), ICAO identifier (4-letter), elevation, time correction (minutes), data source code, sky cover, ceiling, amount and height of up to 6 cloud layers, visibility, weather type, additional weather codes, obstruction to visibility type, severe weather type, temperature, dewpoint, wind direction, wind speed, wind gust, altimeter setting, sea level pressure, and station pressure.
  • Upper level data - Year, month, day, hour, latitude and longitude (to nearest hundredth), WBAN (5-digit), WMO code (5-digit), ident (3-letter), level (mb), geopotential height, temperature, dewpoint, wind direction, and wind speed. Due to space restrictions only mandatory-level data is provided.

    Statistics
    Database size is as follows, as of July 2012:
    Data type           Records         Table size        
    Surface 843 million 101.1 GB
    Upper air 261 million 12.4 GB
    • Result of a query for hours on which the temperature exceeded 90°F at DFW Airport in May 1982. (Click to enlarge)

    Typical station count for various years is as follows. Coverage is only for North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico).
    Year       Unique
    surface
    stations    		 Unique
    upper
    stations
    1930 1 0
    1940 49 0
    1950 270 0
    1960 430 124
    1970 180 138
    1980 1210 136
    1990 1340 123
    2000 1820 104
    2010 2470 121
    2012 2590 122

    Sources
    All data originates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and has been reprocessed into a unified format. Sources include TD3200, TD3280, TD3505, FSL's RAOB database, NOAAPORT archives, and various NCDC, UCAR, and Air Force digital records.

    Period of coverage
    Data begins in 1930 and begins to fully cover the United States by 1950. The ending date is that of the week you order, giving you continuous coverage through 2012.

    Requirements
    A computer with a USB port is required. We use USB3 drives, which are backward-compatible with all USB2 connections. MySQL Server for Windows (free) and easy-to-follow instructions are provided. You are not required to use the external hard drive. You can easily copy the database package to any other hard drive you have for faster or more convenient viewing.

    License
    There are no restrictions on what you do with ARGON output, including resale of output or maps. However the actual database files and tables are copyrighted and uniquely watermarked. Our main concern is duplication and distribution in ways where others would be able to construct their own ARGON system. We support the work of third-party add-ons or front-ends, and will announce any such work on our website.

    Manual and documentation
    A thorough description of Argon can be found here:
        • argon.pdf (PDF, 400 KB, revised June 2012)

    Example dataset
    Contained here is a subset of the Argon surface database provided free of charge for testing purposes. This is all data for January 20, 1982. Several formats are available for download. All of them were created using mySQL's built-in mysqldump tool.
        • example-csv.zip - CSV, comma-delimited format. Useful for Excel.
        • example-sql.zip - SQL format. Executing this will construct a table under mySQL.
        • example-xml.zip - XML format. Useful for PHP and other programming applications.
        • example-db.zip - original raw database. This can be copied into a mySQL table subdirectory.

    Included support
    • Weather Data Updates - Lifetime* weather data updates are provided to those who buy the Weather Data Updates service plan. Updates are currently every six months in January and July, though each user can request one special update anytime of the year. Without this plan, your Argon system will not receive further weather records for dates/times past the purchase date. Not sure whether to get it? You can add the upgrade option at a later date.
    • Maintenance Patches - All users will receive Maintenance Patches free of charge. This does not provide new weather data but makes improvements to the database structure and core data, and may provide optional programs for viewing the data. Most Maintenance Patches are provided on DVD and thus your computer must have a DVD drive in order to be able to install them.
    • Free loss replacement services - For the lifetime* of your purchase if the ARGON hard drive fails, we will provide you with a new ARGON system at no charge (does not include cost of a new hard drive, which you may either send in or purchase through us; does not include database weather updates since your purchase unless you have the Updates plan).
    • Grandfathering - As we add new tables to Argon, such as climatological records and specialized tables, you will get them free of charge and always be on the cutting edge.

    For further information
    If you have questions about the ARGON system, please contact us.

    Purchase
    Argon hard drives are ready to ship. All non-discounted orders receive free FedEx Overnight or USPS Express shipping anywhere in the United States.
    AR001 ARGON system - Standard license $1195.00 HIT RELOAD
    AR005 ARGON Weather Data Updates, for life* $495.00 HIT RELOAD

    NOTE: ARGON can only ship to a credit card holder's verified address (where credit card statements are received). Orders outside the U.S. where we cannot obtain the proper credit card verification will be subject to review and approval before we can ship.
    * Lifetime services are defined as the period during which Weather Graphics remains in business and owns the rights to ARGON, and subject to any unforeseen restrictions on public availability of data.