Putting the final touches on your Master’s projects and looking for some weather information data from the past?  Try…

The Quickie Guide to Finding Past Weather (While Remaining Unable To Do Anything About It) by Deborah Wassertzug:

For recent past (back to 2001), Weather Underground is a good, quick source. Just type in a zip code or other location in the search box. You’ll get the current forecast, and by clicking on “History” you can get temperature, precipitation and sunrise/sunset times. WARNING: Though the site seems to offer historical, the data earlier than 2000 does not appear to be complete.For weather going WAY back, here’s a direct link to the site from the National Weather Service that archives data back to 1876, using the Central Park weather station as an example. (If you are looking for weather observations from a different location – the other two are LaGuardia and JFK – follow the link to Other Stations in New York. These are the only active weather stations in the NYC area.)

Once you’ve found the page for the weather station that interests you, scroll down, about halfway down the page to “Forms, Publications, and Web Pages,” you will see a link to “Record of Climatological Observations” which covers temperature and precipitation (and is available back to 1876 for the Central Park weather station).

Note: Access to this data is free ONLY if you connect from a computer located on a campus (from a .edu domain) – otherwise, you may need to pay for it.