Currently we are trending upwards on the ol’ thermo meter. I know it’s hot outside when I see Sue in shorts! (Holly says, “Pics or it didn’t happen, but y’all just gonna have to take my word for it!) It seems that the winds and the temps keep getting longer and hotter each year. That got Sue to wondering if there was somewhere to go to find the data over the last 100 years or so. So, I took myself to the interwebs.

Arizona became a State on February 14, 1912. Behold! – the Great Seal of the State of Arizona. The state motto is: Ditat Deus, which is generally translated as “God Enriches”. Not a bad motto, as they go. It remains unchanged since 1863, when Arizona was simply a territory. That was a bit of a tangent, let’s get back to the subject here. Since Arizona became a state in 1912, I was thinking there may be weather records that go back that far. And, there may be; but for our zip code, I could only find them going back to 1935.

I found those records on NOAA’s website, National Centers for Environmental Information. There you can search Data for so many different areas over numerous years. I did it by zip. Our information only goes back to 1935 – other areas may have more extensive records. You can search by different parameters and put in a year spread. I wasn’t sure what type of spread sheet I’d be getting, so I only asked for a summary of the month from January 2016-May 2021. Your request goes into a queue and someone compiles your data in the format you wish and emails your report when it is completed. Wow! who knew?! I’ve added a link above, if you’re interested in playing around with it.

The timeframe for your report receipt varies depending on the size of the data you’re requesting and how many requests are ahead of you in the queue. It hasn’t been quite an hour since I requested mine and I haven’t received it yet. I have no idea if four and half years’ worth of data is considered large or not, and there isn’t any way to tell how many requests are ahead of you. According to their order information, my request was received at 6:23pm, so that may be after everyone has gone home. We’ll just have to be patient and see. It was really just an investigatory side quest since it’s too dang hot (111º at the time I started writing this post) to be doing projects outside. I have several “indoor” type projects I want to work on, but I need to finish a few things before I begin another… it continues to percolate in my brain as I look forward to its beginning. More on that later. More on everything later, I suppose. I will close the circle on this weather report once I receive the data and have a chance to sift through it. Perhaps by Thursday. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!