Agriculture Research Guide

The National Weather Service is a component of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Their mission is to provide weather, water, and climate data, forecasts and warnings for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy.

The Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin (WWCB) is jointly prepared by the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The WWCB provides a vital source of information on weather, climate and agricultural developments worldwide, along with detailed charts and tables of agrometeorological information that are appropriate for the season.

National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly the National Climatic Data Center) is responsible for preserving, monitoring, assessing, and providing public access to the Nation's treasure of climate and historical weather data and information.

The U.S. Drought Monitor, established in 1999, is a weekly map of drought conditions that is produced jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The U.S. Drought Monitor website is hosted and maintained by the NDMC.

The National Drought Mitigation Center’s Drought Risk Atlas is a web-based tool that provides visualizations of historic drought data for specific locations. Users can find the station closest to their area of interest or a cluster of stations with similar precipitation attributes. The stations with the longest and most complete records, a minimum of 40 years, were used to compute drought indices.

WaterWatch is a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) World Wide Web site that displays maps, graphs, and tables describing real-time, recent, and past streamflow conditions for the United States. The real-time information generally is updated on an hourly basis. WaterWatch provides streamgage-based maps that show the location of more than 3,000 long-term (30 years or more) USGS streamgages; use colors to represent streamflow conditions compared to historical streamflow; feature a point-and-click interface allowing users to retrieve graphs of stream stage (water elevation) and flow; and highlight locations where extreme hydrologic events, such as floods and droughts, are occurring.

A series of maps showing most recent day, monthly and 12 months calculated soil moisture, anomalies and percentiles; 25-year average soil moisture & soil wetness that are used in the soil moisture outlook.