# Weather

A set of routines useful for getting and plotting Environment Canada bulk weather data. EC keeps historical data (updated daily) for a large number of weather stations across Canada. This bulk data can be obtained manually using terminal commands (wget) and saved as text files for later use. 

Up-to-date instruction for downloading data from Environment Canada can be found at:
ftp://client_climate@ftp.tor.ec.gc.ca/Pub/Get_More_Data_Plus_de_donnees/ 

Folder: Get_More_Data_Plus_de_donnees > Readme.txt

This is cumbersome, so I created these routines to easily download the data for a particular station, as well as plot the resulting data.

The routines do the following functions:
* download data from Environment Canada
* save data in a consolidated format
* load consolidated data
* update data with data from Environment Canada
* grouping routines to group data by month or year
* smoothing routines to estimate a trendline for the data
* various plotting routines to display the data in useful forms
* miscellatious routines

# Weather

A set of routines useful for getting and plotting Environment Canada bulk weather data. EC keeps historical data (updated daily) for a large number of weather stations across Canada. This bulk data can be obtained manually using terminal commands (wget) and saved as text files for later use. 

Up-to-date instruction for downloading data from Environment Canada can be found at:
ftp://client_climate@ftp.tor.ec.gc.ca/Pub/Get_More_Data_Plus_de_donnees/ 

Folder: Get_More_Data_Plus_de_donnees > Readme.txt

This is cumbersome, so I created these routines to easily download the data for a particular station, as well as plot the resulting data.

The routines do the following functions:
* download data from Environment Canada
* save data in a consolidated format
* load consolidated data
* update data with data from Environment Canada
* grouping routines to group data by month or year
* smoothing routines to estimate a trendline for the data
* various plotting routines to display the data in useful forms
* miscellatious routines

## Current Work
I'm investigating smoothing techniques such as adding polynomial regression to lowess, and possibly SSA. An interesting discussion on smoothing can be found at: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/smooth-3/

## Upcoming Changes
* I will eventually move the smoothing functions into their own file to make them useful elsewhere.
* The initializing weather stations and cities will be put into a text file loaded at the beginning to add more flexibility. Change a file, rather than changing the source code. I may do the same with the basepath variable, or determine from code location.

Update Current and Future Work
Update Current and Future Work