A5 - Manual precipitation stations - Measured values

In addition to its automatic precipitation measurements (see 1. Automatic weather stations, 2. Automatic precipitation stations and 3. Automatic tower stations above), MeteoSwiss operates a manual precipitation monitoring network.

Measurements are taken once a day and transmitted to MeteoSwiss via SMS. The network comprises around 240 locations, about 190 stations measure rainfall and snow, and about 50 stations measure snow only. Due to their long-series measurements, they are of great climatological significance.

[!NOTE] For climate analyses, use the corresponding homogeneous time series data instead.

In mountainous areas that are difficult to access, the network is supplemented by around 60 totalisers which record the volume of precipitation for an entire year (see 5. Totaliser precipitation stations).

5.1. Data granularity, update frequency, format and volume

There are files of data granularity d, m, y and update frequency daily (recent) or yearly (historical) for each station.

Data format of all files is CSV with an estimated volume of ≤0.6 MB per file.

See example data files for station PON (set in lower case) for all granularities and update frequencies mentioned: ogd-nime_pon_(data granularity)_(update frequency).csv.

5.2. Parameter metadata

See example parameter metadata files of data granularity: d, m and y.

The productive version will provide a single parameter metadata file for all granularities; file name: ogd-nime_meta_parameters.csv.

5.3. Station metadata

See example station metadata file.

The productive version will provide a station metadata file with the file name: ogd-nime_meta_stations.csv.

5.4. Data visualisation

See e.g. MeteoSwiss' SwissMetNet network map.