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I am trying to find out monthly average temperature and average rainfall for states of USA from 2015 to 2017. To my surprise I am not able to find it anywhere. Please help.

I could find this link - which provides data in a format I want. However, they took average of 30 years, 1981 to 2010. I need data for individual months, starting from Jan 2015 to Dec 2017 (36 data points).

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    $\begingroup$ opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/10154/… may or may not be helpful-- you can get hourly data (but not average data) there and perhaps "compile" it yourself. $\endgroup$
    – user967
    Commented May 30, 2018 at 17:23
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    $\begingroup$ Average temperatures for a state aren't really meaningful, especially for the larger western states. Phoenix (Arizona) is very different from Flagstaff, Las Vegas (Nevada) from anywhere north of Tonopah, in California a reasonable bike ride will take you from hot San Jose to cold & foggy Santa Cruz... $\endgroup$
    – jamesqf
    Commented May 30, 2018 at 19:00
  • $\begingroup$ @jamesqf I'd say it depends what the interest is, but definitely agree that such a number may not be locally representative of the expected weather in large states. Given he wants three years of data, sounds like he has other interests in mind, such as trends? $\endgroup$
    – JeopardyTempest
    Commented May 30, 2018 at 23:26
  • $\begingroup$ I agree @jamesqf, I should use data at a more detailed level (county level) as I am trying to find effect of temperature on sales, but the sales data I have is by state and month. So I have left with no other choice but to use monthly temperatures and monthly precipitation. $\endgroup$
    – Gaurav Singhal
    Commented May 31, 2018 at 8:10

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It may take a few minutes of work this way...

But did find digging through NCDC's climate data inventory, the climatological rankings pages should help find what you're looking for if you're looking for their full state averages.

However, I think can help you a step further with addresses to go through: if you replace STATENUMBER in the address of:

Temperature: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/statewide/time-series/STATENUMBER/tavg/1/4/1895-2018?base_prd=true&begbaseyear=1901&endbaseyear=2000

Instead with each of the numbers 1 through 48, you can get the state data for each of the US contiguous states. And Alaska is 50. Likewise with precip:

Precipitation: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/statewide/time-series/STATENUMBER/pcp/1/4/1895-2018?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000

However, it looks like disappointingly Hawaii (and territories) doesn't get the same data produced, or at least available anywhere I can find on that site. If you really want to seek that out, you might consider using Honolulu and Juan climate reports for a reasonable proxy, or the answer to the question Current Global Climate Dataset? on GSE may offer a rough avenue towards fair gridded information.

Not the easiest avenue, would love to see something better (and hopeful if you do go through this tedious method, perhaps post it to a Github repo or such so that more data may be easily available in the future to others facing the same problem.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, though the automatic links are not working for me, I could get the data in tedious way - many thanks $\endgroup$
    – Gaurav Singhal
    Commented May 30, 2018 at 14:58
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    $\begingroup$ I wonder if I didn't make the links very clear. For Alabama, it'd be www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/statewide/time-series/1/tavg/1/4/1895-2018?base_prd=true&begbaseyear=1901&endbaseyear=2000 $\endgroup$
    – JeopardyTempest
    Commented May 30, 2018 at 23:24
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    $\begingroup$ Then change the first 1 to get the next states. Definitely tedious, but hopefully helpful $\endgroup$
    – JeopardyTempest
    Commented May 30, 2018 at 23:25
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry my bad, I was so numb to observe STATENUMBER in the link. Thanks for clarification. $\endgroup$
    – Gaurav Singhal
    Commented May 31, 2018 at 8:02
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    $\begingroup$ many thanks for the offer, however, I would refrain the temptation of getting it downloaded by you, as this is part of my job and I am getting paid for it. I am trying to relate retail sales of lawn mowers with weather (temperature and rainfall). Basically the objective find out how external factors like weather affect the sales and impress the client by those finding to get the actual "sales forecast" project :) $\endgroup$
    – Gaurav Singhal
    Commented May 31, 2018 at 10:49

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