Guideline for the daily Met station data digitizing process


    The Meteorological Department of Sri Lanka uploads daily weather report on their website that includes rainfall data, and minimum and maximum temperature data for main Meteorological stations.
They monitor data for the last 24Hrs ending at 8.30 AM on the day. The weather report is a pdf document. So we need to convert them into an editable format for the convenience of copying data. There is a format we have to digitize the data of the Met weather report for the usage of the weekly WMS report preparation as well as for future usage. For the usage of weekly WMS report preparation, they require 8 days of average RF, Tmin, and Tmax data every Friday. Therefore, this process needs to be done by Thursday usually. 

    Following are the steps for the overall digitizing process.

Step 1: Download the daily rainfall data report every day.

- Go to the Meteorological Department website. (meteo.gov.lk)

v Weather Summary à Daily rainfall.

- The daily weather report will appear. Download the report and rename the file to the date. (YYYY-M-D) Ex: 2023-5-15

- Upload the file to Google Drive.

- Usually, the Met Department uploads the daily weather report by 12.30 p.m. It is good to make a habit of downloading data at a specific time.

Step 2: Convert downloaded files into editable files (Word, Excel, etc.) using OCR software.

- I recommend converting it into Word files. Then we can easily archive the data column-wise.

- Online OCR software can be used for that.

Step 3:  Digitizing Met daily RF data weekly (every Thursday). 

- First, we need to create a copy of the last version of the data file and rename that copy to the latest version.

- After step 2, we need to archive daily RF, Tmin and Tmax data from converted Met daily weather reports. In the Excel sheet (which includes digitized Met data from 2022), we prepare five sheets for different usages.

- The brief descriptions of the five sheets are as follows.

Sheet 1 (Meteorological stations)

- This sheet includes daily RF, Tmin, and Tmax for all Met stations (24 stations).

- We need to archive Tmin, Tmax and RF data of Met stations and calculate daily average, minimum and maximum rainfall, Tmin and Tmax.

Sheet 2 (Hydro Catchment Areas) :

- This sheet includes daily RF data for 16 hydro catchment stations. Daily averages, maximum and minimum rainfall are calculated under this. We have to calculate the 8-day average, maximum and minimum rainfall for hydro catchment stations as well.

Sheet 3 (Met stations' 8 days rainfall)

- This includes the 8 days rainfall, Tmin, and Tmax of Met stations.

- We need to calculate the 8 days' average, maximum, and minimum rainfall for the northern plains, the southern plains, the eastern, and the central.

Sheets 4 and 5 (Met stations 8 days Tmin / Met stations 8 days Tmax)

- Last 2 sheets for 8 days averages, maximum and minimum of Tmin and Tmax calculations

Step 4: Rechecking the accuracy of data and format settings

- The last step is re-checking the accuracy of the data and setting the formats.

- Since accuracy is very important, we have to recheck and make sure there are no mistakes.

- After that, we need to check the format settings for the user's convenience.

 

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