Bronze level automatically awarded US beta

This data has achieved Bronze level on 22 October 2015 which means this data makes a great start at the basics of publishing open data.

Regional Snowfall Index (RSI)

Description

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center is now producing the Regional Snowfall Index (RSI) for significant snowstorms that impact the eastern two thirds of the U.S. The RSI ranks snowstorm impacts on a scale from 1 to 5, similar to the Fujita scale for tornadoes or the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes. NCDC has analyzed and assigned RSI values to over 500 storms going as far back as 1900. New storms are added operationally. As such, RSI puts the regional impacts of snowstorms into a century-scale historical perspective. The RSI differs from other indices because it includes population. RSI is based on the spatial extent of the storm, the amount of snowfall, and the juxtaposition of these elements with population. The area and population are cumulative values above regional specific thresholds. For example, the thresholds for the Southeast are 2", 5", 10", and 15" of snowfall while the thresholds for the Northeast are 4", 10", 20", and 30" of snowfall. Population information ties the index to societal impacts. Currently, the index uses population based on the 2000 Census. The RSI is an evolution of the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) which NCDC began producing operationally in 2005. While NESIS was developed for storms that had a major impact in the Northeast, it includes the impact of snow on other regions as well. It can be thought of as a quasi-national index that is calibrated to Northeast snowstorms. By contrast, the RSI is a regional index; a separate index is produced for each of the six NCDC climate regions in the eastern two-thirds of the nation. The indices are calculated in a similar fashion to NESIS, but our experience has led us to propose a change in the methodology. The new indices require region-specific parameters and thresholds for the calculations. For details on how RSI is calculated, see Squires et al. 2011.

General Information

Legal Information

This dataset has been created by US Government which means it is required to be in the public domain. However US copyright law only allows open access by US citizens, we have assumed the data is equivalently licensed as CC0 for the rest of the world as this is in the spirit of the US Government’s Open Data policy.

  • The rights statement is at

    http://catalog.data.gov/dataset/regional-snowfall-index-rsi Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

  • Outside the US, this data is available under

    Creative Commons CCZero Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

  • There are

    yes, and the rights are all held by the same person or organisation Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

  • The content is available under

    Creative Commons CCZero Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

  • This data contains

    no data about individuals Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

Practical Information

  • The data appears in this collection

    http://catalog.data.gov/organization/noaa-gov Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

  • This data changes

    no Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

  • The data is

    backed up offsite Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know

Technical Information

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  • Find out how to contact someone about this data at

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  • Find out how to suggest improvements to publication at

    http://www.data.gov/issue/?media_url=http://catalog.data.gov/dataset/regional-snowfall-index-rsi Do you think this data is incorrect? Let us know