A Gridded Hourly Precipitation Data Base for the United States

The Climate Prediction Center at NCEP compiled a multi-year gridded hourly precipitation data set over the United States. One of the main goals of the project was to produce a manageable research-quality data set suitable for studies of precipitation variability on timescales ranging from diurnal to interannual. This data set was derived from the hourly observations of approximately 2500 U.S. stations. The observations were gridded, using a modified Cressman scheme, into 2-degree latitude by 2.5-degree longitude boxes.