After this season’s early snowfall – followed by a long 10-day stretch of temperatures below 30 degrees – I thought it would be a good time to remind people of the weather data resources that we have right here in Indiana.
Let’s start with the Indiana State Climate Office at Purdue University. It has been in operation since the 1950s and is currently led by Dr. Beth Hall, the state climatologist. We frequently refer patrons to the office when they are searching for historical weather data for a certain geographic area in the state. Visit the website, and it immediately points you to several different places to start your search for current weather conditions and trends throughout Indiana. View current seven, 30 and 90-day Climate Maps for the state. You can find the monthly e-newsletter of Indiana’s CoCoRaHS, the Hoosier Observer, here as well. CoCoRaHS stands for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, & Snow network, an organization made up of community volunteers who observe and report precipitation across the U.S., U.S. territories and Canada. View a slideshow about its history here. The office also allows you to submit a data request via the website if you are looking for specific weather data.
An affiliate of the State Climate Office is the Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC), also at Purdue University. MRCC maintains data for Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin. Its online data portal is called CliMATE. The interface has been updated and it is full of data tools for the region. Compare today’s data with the weather for the last 10 years – the precipitation, snowfall, snow depth and high/low temperatures for each day, or choose a date in history and compare the data for each year. Compare the snowfall on this date for your county for the last 20 years! Brown County had 7.2 inches of snow on Dec. 9, 2005.
The MRCC provides an Ag Climate Dashboard, in cooperation with the United Soybean Board, for agricultural research into current precipitation, temperature, soil, environmental and crop conditions. It also points to tools that predict the probability of a freeze or extreme heat. View the MRCC Snowfall Climatology Toolbox, an interactive map that allows you to see snowfall data back to 1880. Additional GIS-based tools from the Midwest Climate Watch include the Tornado Tracks tool (1950-2024), showing touchdown points and tracks by magnitude across the Midwest and the Climate Perspectives Tool which displays max/min/mean temperatures and precipitation in real time.
The Indiana State Data Center resource Statistics by Topic will lead you to federal and state sources for authoritative weather data such as NOAA’s National Weather Service (Weather.gov) and Climate.gov. Ball State University’s Bracken Library also has an excellent LibGuide on Meteorology & Climatology that points to resources from NASA and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Don’t forget to check your local news by phone, TV or radio before you leave home or the office. In Indiana, the weather can change at the drop of a hat, so to stay safe on the roads, you can check the DHS Travel Advisory Map for your county. INDOT TrafficWise 511.org also has the latest live road images of your area of the state. NWS provides links to road conditions for the surrounding states.
Stay prepared for Indiana weather in the new year!
This blog post was written by Katie Springer, reference librarian and director of the Indiana State Data Center. For more information, contact the Reference and Government Services Division at 317-232-3678, or submit an Ask-A-Librarian request.










































