FAQ - History

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1. Enter the location you'd like information about in the search box at the top of any Wunderground.com page.
2. On the City Page, find the box titled History & Almanac below Current Conditions. Choose a date from the drop-down box, and click Go.

The default view for the History page is daily - however, you can also view our historical data by week, month, and custom time spans. For example, if you click "Custom", you can choose two dates from the drop-down boxes that appear on the Custom page, and view data for the desired length of time.

The History page gives a summary as well as graphs, but if you scroll down the page you will find a more detailed chart of weather data. Viewing by day gives the most specific information, by hour. Viewing by week, month, or a custom time span will show the data by day.

TIP: If you are working with this data for a school or scientific project, find the "Comma Delimited File" link below the graphs on any History page. Right click on this link and save it with a .csv extension - this will allow you to import it into Microsoft Excel or a similar program.

About our Weather History

Our history data is only archived back to 1994, and unfortunately some cities are missing large sections of data. The history database is populated by software which automatically processes hundreds of thousands of weather readings per day. Occasionally those readings are in a slightly different format than our software expects, and that results in missing or bad data. The weather readings are also sometimes inaccurate due to station trouble, or data transfer errors.

We constantly work on our history software to improve the data which is available. The best thing you can do about areas of inaccuracy you have already done, let us know! You can help us more if you provide information about exactly what information is bad or missing and what you are using the data for.

Other Sources of Historical Climatic Data:

NOAA U.S. Interactive climate pages: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/USclimate/

National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov

The NCDC "CLIMVIS" option is a free way to get daily, monthly or yearly (but not hourly) data, see: http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/res40.pl?page=climvisgsod.html Click the button "I agree to terms", then click on the map presented to start choosing which data location you want to plot data for.

If you need more detailed data, you may have to pay money. Many of their products are free only to ".edu" domains, for more info check out: http://www.nndc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/nndc/buyOL-002.cgi

There are 6 regional U.S. climate centers:

Midwest: http://mcc.sws.uiuc.edu/

West: http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/

High Plains: http://hpccsun.unl.edu/

Northeast: http://met-www.cit.cornell.edu/

South: http://www.srcc.lsu.edu/

Southeast:http://www.dnr.state.sc.us/climate/sercc/

Many local National Weather Service (NWS) offices keep some climate data for their region on their web page. See http://www.nws.noaa.gov/organization.html for a list of all the web sites of local NWS offices.

Check if a public library in your area has the serial publication "Climatological Data". This monthly is published for each state and lists all official temperature, precipitation, snowfall, evaporation, soil temperature, etc. daily observations from the many weather stations in that state.

There is an excellent book called "The Weather Almanac" which has climatological data for 100 cities across the U.S. You should be able to find this at your local library.

A web alternative to "The Weather Almanac" can be found at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/~cas/Climo/polys/states.txt.html

It has climate data for many US cities in a point and click interface. It is a great alternative to a weather almanac for looking up average temp, precip and snowfall, plus, many states have very cool "relief" maps as the top level, so you get a sense of the topography of the state.

Canadian climate data: Climate.Services@ec.gc.ca http://www.cmc.ec.gc.ca/climate/

International climate data: http://www.worldweather.org http://www.worldclimate.com

Other Types of Historical Data:

Historical storm data: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo

Sea Surface Temperature:

NOAA/NESDIS: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/contour.html

NOAA/AOML: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/cyclone/data/at.html

U.S. Navy OTIS model: https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/PUBLIC/ Click on "OTIS Archive" to get historical SST data back to 1997.

U.S. Navy: https://www.navo.navy.mil/cgi-bin/search.pl/0/metoc/*/*/*/8

http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/ofs/products.shtml

Historical Marine Data: We have some bouy history on our site. To find it, click on the bouy marker for the location of interest. If the history is available, you will see the pull-down calendar under the "Current Wave Detail Observations". If we do not have it on our site, you may find it here:

National Data Buoy Center: http://ndbc.noaa.gov/

Sunrise/Sunset, Moonrise/Moonset, Moon Phase, Moon illumination, Eclipses in the future or past: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/AA/data/

Wind Rose data showing climatological values of wind speed and direction for 237 U.S. cities can be found at: http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/climate/windrose.html

Historical pollen: http://www.aaaai.org/nab/