Weather data - up close and personal

A while ago I read the Michael Crichton novel "State of Fear". The story centers around a conspiracy to make the world believe that global warming and environmental catastrophe are real and immanent. Believe what you like, but one of the good parts about the book is an appendix with internet references to some weather data so that the reader can decide for himself. Mostly the book inspired me to find all of this great climate and weather data for myself. Here is a hundred years of data for Porter Reservoir in Wilmington.

Now that I have the data I may use it to plan when to plant my garden and other weather critical tasks for Wilmington, Delaware. A good example is the table of the first and last frost dates for the years from 1948 to 2000.

Here is the real time stream data for the Brandywine Creek at Wilmington, DE. It is interesting to watch when there are rainstorms because you can watch the peak and then watch the floodwaters recede. Here is a site with all kinds of real time weather data for many sites across Delaware, click on the map when you get there.