TITLE: Mesonet Minnesota Precipitation Network [JOSS] CONTACTS: Steve Williams P.O. Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 Email sfw@ucar.edu 303-497-8164 (voice) 970-491-8293 (fax) 1.0 DATA SET OVERVIEW This data set contains daily observations of precipitation from the Minnesota Precipitation Network. These stations are located across the state of Minnesota. This data set covers the period from 1 May to 31 July 2003. The data are in comma-delimited ASCII format. This network is comprised of hundreds of volunteer observers and is overseen by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Climatology Working Group. 2.0 INSTRUMENT DESCRIPTION 2.1 Station Locations Station locations are included in the data files. No elevation data are available. 2.2 Instrumentation Most precipitation observers utilize four-inch diameter plastic rain gauges with resolution to 0.01 inch. Observation cycles vary widely, but the majority of the volunteers are morning (7:00 or 8:00 AM) observers. 3.0 DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING UCAR/JOSS conducted no processing or quality control on these data. 4.0 DATA FORMAT AND FILE NAMING 4.1 Data Format These data are in comma-delimited ASCII format. The file naming convention provides you with year and month. The data lines contain comma-separated fields: - station identifier (internally used) - latitude (decimal degrees) - longitude (decimal degrees) - precipitation (inches), data flag - times the number of days in the month - flags: T = trace of precipitation M = missing (no measurement made) E = estimate | = multi-day accumulation, total to follow A = multi-day accumulation total The data lines are sorted by county. 4.2 File Naming conventions mnprecip_yyyy_mm.csv yyyy is the year (2003) mm is the month 5.0 DATA REMARKS Please make attribution to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Minnesota Climatology Working Group, and the hundreds of volunteers who make such data sets possible. 6.0 REFERENCES Minnesota Climatology Working Group web page: http://climate.umn.edu/