OWWLS, Overview of Weather Water Land Sites, maps the location of weather stations, stream gauges, ground water monitoring stations and reservoirs across much of the West. Data from many of these stations are used to assess local conditions for the U.S. Drought Monitor. This tool provides information to help climate service providers and partners identify areas with limited or no weather or water data. Identifying gaps in the spatial distribution of monitoring stations can help inform deployment of future stations and recruitment of new observers.
This tool shows station locations along with reference information to provide additional context, such as counties/boroughs/census areas, watersheds, land ownership, land use/land cover, radar coverage, and USDA Risk Management payments for weather-related causes. Users can view one or more networks of stations by clicking boxes to toggle networks on and off. Click the plus sign next to the description to get more information about stations and reference layers. Note that this is a static map, with most station data downloaded in 2021-2022. This tool will not tell you if stations are temporarily out of service.
OWWLS was developed via a collaboration between the National Drought Mitigation Center and the USDA Northwest and Southwest Climate Hubs, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Economist, to inventory weather and water station networks across much of the West.