Prairie du Sac - Sauk City, Wisconsin, monthly precipitation data
Abstract
This is a compilation of total monthly precipitation data in total inches for two NOAA weather stations. The Prairie du Sac station data located at the Prairie du Sac dam on the Wisconsin River (43.31 , -89.7283) started with full monthly records being recorded in 1912 with complete monthly records through 2007. In mid-2007 a nearby station was established in Sauk City at the wastewater treatment plant (43.262 , -89.7349) with continuous data from 2008 through the present. The two stations are relatively close (about 3.25 miles apart), and both are slightly more than 4 miles to the west of the centroid of Fish Lake (Dane Co.) a core study lake in the North Temperate Lakes Long-Term Ecological Research Project conducted by the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The compiled monthly records are based on daily NOAA precipitation records available electronically to the public. As a general practice, daily precipitation over weekends and holidays was not regularly recorded at the stations such that cumulative totals were recorded the following workweek day. As such, while the records for each single day were not always accurately recorded, the monthly totals were generally accurate. However, starting in 1996 at the Prairie du Sac station, because the cumulative weekend/holiday precipitation didn’t allow known daily totals, those cumulate weekend/holiday records were not submitted to NOAA so they were recorded as missing data in NOAA’s electronic dataset. To rectify the many months of missing data, pdf’s of the original hand-written monthly submissions were retrieved from NOAA’s archives such that the monthly precipitation totals could be calculated. In the process a few transcription errors in the electronic records of other months were also corrected in this dataset as well as determining a few other monthly records that were missing. Thus, this dataset of monthly precipitation at the two nearby weather stations is complete and hopefully accurate.<br/>
Creator
Dataset ID
422
Data Sources
LTER Keywords
Methods
With advice from Ed Hopkins, the Assistant State Climatologist, pdf’s of the original paper copies of the daily precipitation submissions of both stations were downloaded. Almost universally, precipitation over weekends and holidays was not recorded at the stations such that totals were recorded the following workweek day. In the early years, while the records for each single day were not always accurately recorded, the cumulative weekend/holiday totals were recorded such that one could get a full monthly total that was generally accurate. However, starting in 1996, because the cumulative weekend/holiday precipitation didn’t allow to know daily totals, those records were not submitted electronically to NOAA’s final database so they were recorded as missing data in NOAA’s electronic dataset. However, from the hand-written pdf’s it was possible to compile the monthly totals. In the process quite a few months were checked and a few errors in the NOAA totals fixed.<br/>
NTL Keyword
NTL Themes
Version Number
1