This appendix provides the necessary information to repeat this exercise by using data for other gage stations. As you remember, these data for gaging stations 03451000 and 02089000 were given in ready-to-use format. This Appendix describes how to download the datasets and process the data to obtain weather and streamflow data for the station 03451000. The procedure can be repeated on any weather station where data is available.

Obtaining Weather Data (Rainfall and Temperature)

First, go to the National Climatic Data Center’s (NCDC) web site, http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html. Select “Weather Station/City” under the “Locate NCDC Products by” menu. Select the “Cooperative Station ID# *” option, enter the station ID, 03451000, and click on Search.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: For the second gage station 02089000, there are two options. You should use“Goldsboro Seymour Johnson Air Force Base” because it provides a larger range of data.
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When the next page appears, scroll down to “Digital ASCII Files” and click on “3220 -Summary Of The Month (SOM) Cooperative”.

You should now see a form like this:

From the meteorological elements menu, select MNTM Monthly mean temperature (deg F). Select the year range from 1950 to 2002 (or the possible widest range), Delimited – Station Names, Comma options, and click on Continue.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: You must be doing this from a .edu network address or else you will be charged for the data.  Climatic data are free to educational institutions.
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Write your e-mail and Submit Request.

Click on the link on the output page. The link starts with http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/orders/ and continues with your order number. When you follow the link, a table with four rows will appear on the next page. The first row is the data row. It is called TD3220 - Surface Data, Monthly - US & some Non-US Cooperative - Data File. When you click on the link on the first row you will access the temperature data. It looks like this:

Select all the data, then copy and paste it to a new Excel file. By using the "Text to Columns" option from the "Data" menu in Excel, convert the comma delimited format into columns. Your file should look like the one below:

Keep the columns COOPID, YEAR, JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP, OCT, NOV, DEC; and remove the rest.

Also remove the observations with value "-9999" which indicates "no data". Those cells should be empty.

Your file look will look like the one:

The current data is in tabulated format. To make this data useable, we need to format the data in columns. In other words, the file should include four columns: COOPID, YEAR, MONTH, TEMPERATURE. You can do this by cutting each month and add to the end of the JAN column. After pasting all months, just adding a column called "MONTH" and give the proper month numbers from 1 to 12 for each observation. Then sort the data by year and month. Your resulting data should look like below:

You can save this file in Excel format.

Obtaining Precipitation Data

To download precipitation data, repeat the same steps that you followed to download the temperature data. This time you need to select "TPCP Total Monthly precip (in.)" from the meteorological elements menu.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: Not all the sites have temperature and precipitation data. If the site(s) has no temperature or precipitation data, you need to select a different site or sites.
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Similar to your temperature file, your precipitation file should look like below:

 You can save this file in Excel format.

Obtaining Streamflow Data

In this step, we will download the streamflow data for the site we selected. Remember that gage station 03451000(SWANNANOA RIVER AT BILTMORE) was one of the selected stations for this example. To download streamflow data, first go to USGS’ “Monthly Streamflow Statistics for North Carolina” site (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nc/nwis/monthly).

Select only the Site Number option under the Site Identifier menu and Submit. Enter site number, which is 03451000 in this case, select exact match option, and also options Tab-separated data, YYYY-MM-DD and Display in browser options, then Submit. When the results appear on your browser, copy them (excluding the explanation lines starting with #) and paste to a new Excel spreadsheet.

Using the Data, Text to Columns option in Excel, convert the tab delimited format into columns. to use the Text to Columns:

1. Select the range of cells that contains the data. 
2. On the Data menu, click Text to Columns.
3. Follow the instructions in the Convert Text to Columns Wizard to specify how you want to divide the text into columns. Select the options:

- Delimited Option, and click next
- Comma Option for Delimiters, and click next
- Select Column Data Format for each Column (General works well for most of the columns), and click Finish.

After having the in columns, rename the column agency_cd as AGENCY,site_nu as SITE, year_nu as YEAR, month_nu as MONTH, mean_va as STREAMFLOW, and also delete the second row that includes column codes. Your file should look like the one below:

This appendix shows you how to obtain weather and streamflow data for station 03451000. By repeating this procedure you can download and format data for any station and test if that particular station has experienced flooding during Hurricane Floyd and how much.