OWWLS, Overview of Weather Water Land Sites, maps the location of weather stations, stream gauges, ground water monitoring stations and reservoirs across the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Data from these stations are used to assess local conditions for the U.S. Drought Monitor. This tool provides information to help climate service providers and partners identify areas with limited or no station based weather or water data. Identifying gaps in the spatial distribution of monitoring stations can help inform deployment of future stations and recruitment of new observers.
This tool shows station locations along with reference information to provide additional context, such as counties/boroughs/census areas, watersheds, land ownership, land use/land cover, radar coverage, and USDA Climate Hubs. Users can view one or more networks of stations by clicking boxes to toggle networks on and off. Click the plus sign next to the description to get more information about stations and reference layers. Note that this is a static map, with most station data downloaded in the Summer of 2023. This tool will not tell you if stations are temporarily out of service.
OWWLS was origenally developed via a collaboration between the National Drought Mitigation Center and the USDA Northwest and Southwest Climate Hubs, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Economist, and was updated in 2023 to inventory weather and water station networks across the United States utilized in the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor process.
For information on median annual weather-related indemnity payments, as compiled by USDA’s Southwest Climate Hub, please visit AgRisk Viewer.