TITLE: Mesonet Arizona Department of Water Resources ALERT Weather Station Data CONTACTS: Kay McNeely Arizona Department of Water Resources hkmcneely@azwater.gov http://www.water.az.gov/adwr/ 1.0 DATA SET OVERVIEW This data set contains precipitation data from the ALERT weater station overseen by the Arizona Department of Water Resources. There is 1 station included in the data set. The data are collected on an event basis. The station is located in Cochise County in Arizona. This data set covers the period from 1 June to 30 September 2004. The data are in columnar ASCII format. 2.0 INSTRUMENT DESCRIPTION 2.1 Instrumentation Information At the time of this writing instrumentation information is not available. The instrument vendor suggested heights of 20 feet for wind measurements, but ADWR knows of heights as low as 15 feet (at the Organ Pipe station). 2.2 Station Locations Station locations are included in the comma delimited file ADWR_ALERT_locs.pdf that is included with your data order. From ADWR (15 June 2005): Not all the sites have lat and long data, and elevations are a guesstimate on some, too. Our consultant is in the field this week doing maintenance work on Pinal and Santa Cruz county gauges. I fired off an email to him this morning asking him to make note of lat, long, and elevation. 3.0 DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING No information. UCAR/JOSS conducted no processing or quality control on these data. 4.0 DATA FORMAT AND FILE NAMING 4.1 Data Format There are individual files for each station and parameter. These data are in columnar ASCII format. Each file contains some header records, e.g. Sensor 3072 / Willcox ADOT WS (Temperature) Date Time degrees_F These provide the sensor id (3072) the station name (Willcox ADOT WS), the parameter (Temperature) and then the data column headers with the Date and Time (in Mountain Standard Time) and the units (degrees_F). Values are recorded on an event basis. The precipitation values are cumulative over the water year. 4.2 File Naming conventions StationName_parameter_SensorID.txt e.g. WilcoxWx_Temp_3072.txt 5.0 DATA REMARKS From ADWR (15 June 2005): Red Mountain Repeater in Santa Cruz County was struck by lightning in Summer 2004. I would venture to guess it occurred on July 11 or 12, since that was the last good reading date on gauges that transmit through there, i.e., Ephraim Wash, Sonoita Creek, Potrero, Las Canoas, and Nogales Wash. The new repeater was not installed until October, and when it was, the tipping bucket was not done correctly, and we have not had a valid Red Mtn precip reading since. By coincidence, that site is being visited today for repair. --- The last good pressure transducer reading for Las Canoas (Santa Cruz County) was June 29, 2004. It's located at the Mariposa Border Crossing and the cable was cut, presumably by illegals thinking they were being watched. That cable will be repaired this week. --- Some gauges have huge gaps in the record, and I can't explain why. For example, Signal Peak Repeater precip and Kofa precip both have a gap from 8/3 to 9/13. Kofa does not go through Signal Peak, so any malfunction to that repeater would not account for the data loss at Kofa. --- 6.0 REFERNCES None.