Over a century and a half of Canada’s weather data is now online

Ottawa, ON July 31, 2003 Canada’s vast storehouse of past weather records is now publicly available on a new web site. As the official keeper of the nation’s weather records, Environment Canada maintains a collection of over 200 million observations from over 7,000 sites some dating as far back as 1840.

Environment Canada’s meteorological service maintains the national climate data archive, which contains the official climate and weather observations for Canada. The archive consists of a database of hourly weather observations, including temperature, precipitation, air pressure, wind speed, and cloud types, as well as notes on the occurrence of thunderstorms, hail, fog and other types of weather. Most of this collection is now available through the new web site.

The new national climate data archive site is available through Environment Canada’s “weather office” site, at www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca. Follow the “climate” link.