Summary of Spring 2025 MesoWest Product Changes

Updated: May 1, 2025

The MesoWest team has supported since 1997 access to publicly available weather observations through a variety of products accessible through https://mesowest.utah.edu. In order to continue providing support for our core visualization products, we made some changes during Spring 2025 to our product availability. We no longer have the financial and staff resources to sustain all of the customized software developed over the past 25 years.

MesoWest visualization products (graphical and tabular displays) are intended for public, educational, and research uses. Commercial and operational users should rely on Synoptic Data PBC, as it has the resources to meet 24/7 and operational needs. As a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), Synoptic Data has a broader mission, resources, and tools to aggregate, process, and distribute data to all sectors of the environmental enterprise to aid with daily activities, operations, and decision-making; save lives; protect property; and educate new generations about Earth's weather and climate.

Synoptic Data PBC has crafted a Synoptic Data PBC Product User Guide for users of MesoWest who may be interested in further exploring their products and offerings. We encourage you to consider using the excellent data viewer now available from Synoptic Data PBC (https://viewer.synopticdata.com/) as opposed to the legacy MesoWest graphical and tabular displays we will continue to support.

The following is a summary of product changes that occurred during the spring of 2025:

1) MesoWest No Longer Supports User Accounts or Customized Viewing Profiles

In order to reduce our maintenance costs and needs to manageable levels, MesoWest no longer supports "MesoWest User Accounts" or customized viewing profiles. We continue to support the various products available on our existing web pages with their default selection settings, which do not require any account management or access. Users who wish to have a customized user experience are encouraged to explore the offerings available via Synoptic Data's Viewer (https://viewer.synopticdata.com/). Information on how to utilize Synoptic Data's Viewer and other products can be found in this Synoptic Data PBC Product User Guide.

2) Changes to Previously-Available MesoWest Data Download Services

MesoWest completed changes to the tools available to download weather observations from the MesoWest website. Users may interactively download observations from available stations on MesoWest using this Interactive Data Download Tool. Previous versions of data download tools on the MesoWest interface have been retired.

Users who require extended time period data access are encouraged to explore the data access services offered by Synoptic Data PBC, including a Data Download Tool similar to prior MesoWest website-based versions (https://docs.synopticdata.com/services/data-download-tool).

3) Changes to How MesoWest Receives Real-Time Observations and Metadata

MesoWest changed how it receives data into its legacy database. The data into MesoWest systems now originate entirely from Synoptic Data PBC that bundles all the data into a single data stream. While this change should not have impacted the majority of weather stations available in our displays, we did reduce our support for some stations outside of North America and multiple same-sensor measurements (e.g., two wind sensors) at the same station.

These changes had no impact on the actual reception of data by Synoptic Data PBC. Users who require continuous records, or have multiple sensor systems, are encouraged to rely on Synoptic Data's Viewer (https://viewer.synopticdata.com/) as well as Weather API Services (https://docs.synopticdata.com/services/weather-data-api) for accessing complete data from the weather stations that have been available from MesoWest.


Our team is happy to answer any questions regarding these changes that took place during the spring of 2025. We can be contacted through our support email provided at the bottom of this web page.

Regards

The MesoWest Team



To return to the MesoWest homepage please click https://mesowest.utah.edu.