What is the gridded data used in weather?
Overview:
Weather data plays an important part in planning for growth stage calculation, planning, and understanding how each field is doing during the season. Precipitation and Growing Degree Units (GDU) are essential to plants. Using data from different sources to create a grid is how the weather is determined for different applications.
Answer:
Gridded data is a combination of point data (meaning data from a single, specific source such as an individual weather station) and other data sources that represent a large area of geography such as a 30 km by 30 km square. Weather data for a given latitude/longitude is returned for the grid cell where the lat/long is contained.
The Weather Company (TWC) uses many different sources of data in their gridded products including:
- Public weather stations, NOAA sources, and METAR stations
- Weather stations from their subsidiary, Weather Underground, that have passed a rigorous certification (gold star stations) are used in temperature calculations
- Additional radar interpolations
- Other factors that TWC does not reveal
