Frequently Asked Questions

Please correct the spelling of ...

Many of these place names are spelled wrong, or are incomplete. Many of them are listed as being in a country which doesn't exist any more. This is how they appear on the source data, in most cases. There isn't the time to fix them right now (I have to go and do real work!), but they should be better in the next version (might be quite a while).

Do you have any data for ...?

The only places currently online are those you can find by searching. Try looking for a nearby place, and also try spelling the placename in the local language. Remember: enter a place name (city, town) only. Don't enter a region such as Tuscany or a country name. If in doubt of the spelling, just enter the first few characters.

Can you add the data for ...?

Most of this data comes from large data sets with hundreds and thousands of places in them, and I'm adding more all the time. So if it is missing now, it MIGHT appear later from a new source. Otherwise, the best bet is to search for nearby placenames.

Was it raining in New York on 15 August 1994?

I don't have any practical way to look up specific data for a given time period or date. This site concentrates on long term averages. You might find some recent date-specific data at NCDC (mostly US data, much of it charged for). Also, for the US only there's daily data since 1994 at The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Will it rain tomorrow in Chicago?

This is not a weather forecasting (or reporting) site. I don't know what the weather will be like anywhere tomorrow (or yesterday). The climate averages will help you determine the normal weather, but that's no guarantee it will be normal when you get there...

Is this data accurate?

NO. All climate data has errors, it is certain that some are present here. This data has been distilled (both by the data sources and by me) from several billion individual readings made by tens of thousands of people in every part of the world over the past couple of centuries. It has then been transcribed, summarized, modified and converted by many more people in many countries. This is unlikely to be a perfect process ...

Please read the disclaimer. Having said all that, every attempt has been made to keep it as accurate as possible, please let me know if you find any major numeric errors. (see known errors below)

Are you going to have sunshine data?

Yes, for some places, as soon as I can get the data processed, formatted, documented and uploaded. The same goes for snowfall, humidity, wind, and so on. They're all in queue and will be dealt with as time permits, but as I'm working full time on several other jobs this will be a while!

What does Average Temperature mean?

To see definitions of terms such as Average Temperature, Rainfall etc, see Definitions.

What is the average climate for the USA, Netherlands, etc

Climate figures for a large area are meaningless. For example, an average for the USA would include Alaska and Florida. This would give a nice mild climate that is unlike most parts of the US and be quite useless. Most climates you see published that give the climate for a "country" are in fact the climate of the capital city, or a major city.

KNOWN ERRORS

Some northern Pakistan climate data is out by six months (seasons reversed). Rainfall for Paris Montsouris, and Larnaca, is 2.54 times too high (inches/centimeters confusion!). These are errors that were in the source data I used, they will be corrected in the next version. There are also a few cases where an annual total is very slightly different from the sum of the months, this is caused by rounding and conversion errors, again this is something that I'm looking at closely in the next version.