Rocky Mountain National Park does not keep a database of weather and climate data. Below are several useful links to websites that provide weather information about the Rocky Mountain Region.
Volunteers, including several in the Estes Park Area, have been collecting rain and hail data throughout the state since 1998. There are no sites in the Grand Lake area at this time. The on-line data provides station location maps and daily precipitation and hail totals by location or date.
Part of the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, the Colorado Climate Center monitors climate over time. The site provides links to our state's climate data. The site also focuses on droughts in Colorado.
NOAA sponsors six regional climate centers to help manage data. The center monitors drought, supports research, and maintains historical climatic data. The center will process requests for data, but it also makes its data available via the internet. On-line data includes detailed historical climate summaries, climate monitoring, climate maps, data inventories, El Niño/La Niña, regional data networks, monthly and annual time series, educational resources, and travel information.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) provide national climate data through the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). The databases can be searched on-line.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides data on snowpack accumulation across the western US. The databases can be searched on-line by SnowTel site, and by year. Information is updated daily, and is available starting from 1997. Five SnowTel sites are currently monitored in the park. They are Willow Park, Bear Lake, and Copeland Lake in the South Platte River drainage (east side of the park), and Lake Irene and Phantom Valley in the Colorado River drainage (west side of the park). A sixth site at Ouzle Falls, on the east side of the park, is currently under construction.
The (NOAA) sponsored a paleo-climatic research project on North American Drought. The purpose of the website is to "explain how paleoclimatic data can provide information about past droughts and about the natural variability of drought over timescales of decades to millennia," with a focus on North America. The website also provides drought data.
Similarly, NOAA provides information on global warming. This purpose of this website is "to help educate, inform and highlight the importance of paleoclimate research; as well as to show how paleoclimate research relates to global warming and other important issues of climate variability and change." This page, too, provides data.
