Article #121 - Where Does the REScheck and COMcheck Weather Data Come From?
The weather data, used by the Check software products, comes from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The published heating degree-days come from 30 years of data and are updated on a delayed 10 year cycle (the software is using the 1960-1990 data until the 1970-2000 data becomes available). There are 4775 NOAA weather sites that include airports, dams, fire look-out towers etc.
The list of cities was taken from the U.S. Geological Survey''s Populated Places (PPL) database (which is part of USGS''s Geographic Names Information System). The PPL database contains the name, location (latitude/longitude), elevation, and sometimes the population of over 165,000 locations in the U.S. and its possessions. The PPL locations were mapped to a best available NOAA weather station as a source of heating degree-days, cooling degree-days, and other climate parameters. The new REScheck weather file contains the subset of the PPL locations for which the USGS has a population estimate (a little more than 22,000 cities).
It is possible for city heating degree-days to be changed back to what they were in the old weather files. The changes occurs to the cities referenced weather station or change specific climate parameters, if formally requested to do so by a state official.
If you city is not included in the current file, the easiest thing to do is choose another city that is close to yours. If requested by a state official, we can add new cities to the list so they will appear in future versions of the software. We have pre-mapped over 165,000 cities to NOAA weather stations, so it is likely the software already has data for your location.