zip2ws: Find weather stations ‘nearest’ to zip codes

What it does:

  1. Finds (certain kinds of) weather stations “nearest” (within a certain distance, or X number of closest) to each zip code centroid
  2. Finds centroids of zip codes using Google API

Additional Details

Weather stations come in lots of varieties. We limit ourselves to weather stations of the following four kinds:

  1. GHCND stations list. For current list, see: NCDC GHCND Stations List
  2. ASOS stations list. For current list, see: NCDC ASOS Stations List
  3. COOP stations list (Active only). For current list, see: NCDC COOP Stations List
  4. USAF-WBAN stations list. For current list, see: NCDC ISH Stations List

Fields

  • zip, lat, long, city, state, zipcodetype, locationtype, location, decommisioned, taxreturns, estimatedpopulation, totalwages from federalgovernmentzipcodes.us:
  • gm_lat/gm_long: lat./long. of centroids of zip codes via Google API.
  • diff: distance in meters between Google API estimated centroid of zip code and lat/long that comes with the database.
  • list of stations: ordered from closest to furthest
  • stX_id: station id
  • stX_name: name of station
  • stX_distance: distance to zip centroid

Running the script

To run the script, you will need to install two Python libraries:

  • pygeocoder To install, you can simply use: $ pip install pygeocoder
  • requests To install, you can simply user: $ pip install requests

Don’t forget the inventories directory that contains the station files and zip csv that is imported. The inventories folder should be in the same folder as the script.


Usage: zip2ws.py [options]

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -D DATABASE, --database=DATABASE
                        Database name (default: zip2ws.sqlite)
  -i, --import          Create and import database
  -g, --geocode         Query and update Lat/Lon by Google Maps Geocoding API
  -c, --closest         Calculate and update closest table
  --ghcn=GHCN           Number of closest stations for GHCN (default: 3)
  --coop=COOP           Number of closest stations for COOP (default: 1)
  --usaf=USAF           Number of closest stations for USAF (default: 1)
  -d DISTANCE, --distance=DISTANCE
                        Maximum distance of stations from Zip location
                        (Default: 0)
  -e, --export          Export closest stations for each Zip to CSV file
  -o OUTFILE, --outfile=OUTFILE
                        CSV Output file name (default: zip-stations.csv)
  --drop-closest        Drop closet table
  --clear-glatlon       Clear Google Maps Geocoding API Lat/Lon
  --use-zlatlon         Use Zip Lat/Lon instead of Google Geocoding Lat/Lon

Start using the script by creating and importing the database. Do so by running:

python zip2ws.py -i

Next task is to update the closest weather stations table. This you can do by executing...

python zip2ws.py -c

This task uses the Google lat/long. If you want them to use other lat/long,

python zip2ws.py -c --use-zlatlon

NOTE: If you interrupt the script inbetween and restart it again, the script will start processing from where it left off.

If you want to find a set number of closest stations, specify the type and number of weather stations. For instance, to find 5 GHCND statons, 3 COOP stations, and 2 USAF stations, run:

  python zip2ws.py -c --ghcn=5 --coop=3 --usaf=2

To find all weather stations within 30KM and organized by closest to furthest,

   python zip2ws.py -c -d 30

To export results to a CSV file, “closest.csv”, run..

  python zip2ws.py -e -o closest.csv

To find out centroids of zip codes using Google Maps Geocoding API, use

python zip2ws.py -g

Keep in mind that Google Maps Geocoding API usage limit is 2,500 Query/Day/IP Address. So you can quickly run into the limit. The script will raise the exception “OVER_QUERY_LIMIT” if the limit is breached. But do not fear. You can run the script multiple times to code a greater number of zip codes. If you are unahppy with the results, use the option: –clear-glatlon to clear exist data.