How to View Your Observations: The Mountain Rain or Snow Map Dashboard

December 2024 - Nayoung Hur

Whether you are a new observer or a multi-season “super-observer”, you may have wondered how you can see, interact with, and visualize the entire set of observations sent by the Mountain Rain or Snow community.

Mountain Rain or Snow observers have shared over 80,000 precipitation phase reports from across the United States. Our team is excited to announce the launch of our map dashboard, developed to showcase the precipitation reports that our community observers have shared in the past several years, and provide a landing space for all those interested to view and download the dataset.

After a report is submitted, the data move through our data processing pipeline, a process which takes seven days. The reports then appear on the map dashboard with additional information like the elevation and U.S. state along with modeled air, dew point, wet bulb temperatures and relative humidity values for each observation.

The map has a couple of features that protect observer privacy. The first is a limit to the ability to zoom capabilities of the map – viewers can see approximately where in a community the observations took place, but they can’t zoom in to see exactly what building they may have been sent from. The map also adds a small amount of “jiggle” to the location of each observation so it doesn’t appear right over the building from which it may have been sent.

Access the map dashboard

What are some ways you can interact with the map dashboard?

Search observations by date or by elevation

Simply subset the data by either selecting the pre-determined date buttons or enter a specified time period. In this example, we are going to look at the 2024 water year data (2023-10-01 to 2024-09-30).

There is also the option to filter by elevation bounds. Please note that the elevation data are output as meters (1 meter ~ 3.281 feet).

Screenshot of the map dashboard showing all observations in the United States between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024.

Click each observation to see the details we’ve added (there’s a lot!)

Zoom into the dashboard and click on the observation to see the additional information that we add for each observation, for example modeled air temperature, dew point, wet bulb temperature, and relative humidity.

“Grab” observations using the Lasso or Box Select tool

In the upper righthand corner, you can select the observations using the Lasso or Box Select tool. Unselected observations will become more transparent, to make more apparent the selected observations.

Screenshot of the zoomed-in map showing many observations, some of which are selected using either the lasso or box select tool.

Users wanting more technical information can click on ‘User Guide’, which provides a description (aka metadata) of the additional information that is added alongside observations of precipitation phase.

The dashboard is in its first version, and we expect there will be updates to the dashboard.

If you are having issues with access or download of the data, please reach out to our team at rainorsnow@dri.edu or text (855) 909-0798, and a Mountain Rain or Snow team member will respond to you within 48 hours.

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