About Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS)

Direct link to video from National Interagency Fire Center on YouTube

Several years ago I learned about Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS), automated weather stations located around the United States, where I am able to obtain weather observations. I use weather information from RAWS in addition to the observations that I can obtain from my local Weather Forecast Office. One source of RAWS observations is MesoWest where you can click on a State you are interested in and select "RAWS" in the "network box" on the top left, or you may use the drop down box. For example. I have accessed RAWS data for New Jersey from MesoWest that may be found here. In my explorations just now as I was preparing to write this post, I found a National RAWS Archive for the United States with a clickable map.

To be completely honest while I sometimes use RAWS observations for my own personal information, I am also very interested in how RAWS are used to aid in fire weather forecasts, both permanent RAWS stations and Incident Remote Automated Weather Stations that are used by Incident Meterologists. The National Interagency Fire Center has a network of about 2,200 RAWS stations that includes most of the RAWS sites on MesoWest  used to aid fire weather forecasters among other uses. 

I hope that you have watched or will watch the four minute video from NIFC that I embedded above to learn about how fire weather forecasters and incident meterologists (IMETS) use RAWS and or the portable Incident RAWS (IRAWS). Note the IRAWS are also used for hurricane forecasting, and in responding to other natural or man made disasters.. You may also want to read the NIFC page on RAWS which includes a link to the video on this NIFC webpage.