TITLE: Mesonet North Dakota Roadway Weather Information System (RWIS) Network 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 10 minute resolution surface meteorological data from the North Dakota Road Weather Information System (RWIS) operated by the North Dakota Department of Transportation. The network includes 13 stations located throughout the state of North Dakota. This data set covers the period from 18 May to 8 July 2003. The data are in comma-delimited ASCII format. 2.0 INSTRUMENT DESCRIPTION 2.1 Instrumentation Regarding the placement of the sensors, the early systems (first six) were placed without atmos research consideration, but the last eight have been placed in collaboration with our university research as well as the ND DOT needs. The placement of each of these sites is unobstructed and meets with requirements for use in atmospheric research. Regarding the instrumentation .. all sites are manufactured by Surface Systems Inc. and include a complement of air temperature, dew point, wind speed / direction. Some sites include barometric pressure, but not all. The pavement sensors include temperature (surface / sub-surface, chemical concentration, surface moisture). In addition, several of the sites are specially instrumented with deep sub-surface temperature probes for ongoing research of atmospheric drivers of pavement sub-grade frost. 2.2 Station Locations Station latitude longitude elevation -------------------------------------------------------- | Bismarck SCAN | 46.83 | -100.85 | -9999 | | Blaisdell SCAN | 48.32 | -102.05 | -9999 | | Bowesmont SCAN | 48.71 | -97.19 | -9999 | | Buffalo SCAN | 47.03 | -97.55 | -9999 | | Buxton SCAN | 47.54 | -97.08 | -9999 | | Crosby SCAN* | 48.91 | -103.44 | -9999 | | Devils Lake SCAN | No information at present | Emerado SCAN* | 47.93 | -97.35 | -9999 | | Fargo SCAN | 46.85 | -96.79 | -9999 | ** | Fryburg SCAN | 46.89 | -103.29 | -9999 | | Golden Valley SCAN*| 47.3 | -102.05 | -9999 | | Grassy Butte SCAN | No information at present | Medina SCAN | 46.88 | -99.28 | -9999 | | New Salem SCAN | 46.86 | -101.45 | -9999 | | Rugby SCAN* | 48.35 | -100.07 | -9999 | | Sterling SCAN* | 46.84 | -100.26 | -9999 | ** | Wahpeton SCAN | No information at present -------------------------------------------------------- * - denotes sites with 8-level sub-surface temperatures to 2-metars below pavement base. 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 first line in every file describes the parameters. The units are: Time (Central Daylight Time) AirTemp (Degrees F) RH (percent) Dewpoint (Degrees F) AvgWindSpeed (miles per hour) GustWindSpeed (miles per hour) WindDirection (degrees) Precip Type (None, Yes) Precip Intensity (Light, Moderate, Heavy) PrecipRate (inches per hour) PrecipAccumulation (inches) Visibility (miles) The Wind Direction convension is as follows: Direction Cardinal Format Degree Range ----------------------------------------------------- North N 338 - 22 Northeast NE 23 - 68 East E 69 - 112 Southeast SE 113 - 158 South S 159 - 202 Southwest SW 203 - 248 West W 249 - 292 Northwest NW 293 - 337 4.2 File Naming conventions Bismarck_20030619.txt where Bismarck is the station name 2003 is the four digit year 06 is the two digit month (June) 19 is the two digit day 5.0 DATA REMARKS NONE. 6.0 REFERNCES ND RWIS home page: http://dotrwis.dot.state.nd.us/