Automated Data Plotter

This application dynamically generates many types of graphs derived from various IEM data sources. Feel free to use these generated graphics in whatever way you wish.

Reset App IEM Explorer (Simplified)

1 Select a Chart Type

Choose from available chart types:

Trailing Standardized Precip (SPI) + Drought Monitor (#228)

2 Configure Chart Options

Application Mode:

Select State:

Retroactive Date of Plot

(YYYY/mm/dd)

Over how many trailing days to compute the metric?

Image Pixel Size @100 DPI

Image Resolution (DPI) (50 to 500)

Select Output Format:

Plot Description:

This visualization mashes up the US Drought Monitor and three trailing day standardized precipitation index of your choice within a map presentation for a single state. SPI is computed by the simple formula of (accum - climatology) / standard deviation.

This autoplot is extremely slow to generate due to the on-the-fly calculation of standard deviation. As such, an optimization is done to sub-sample from available stations since the resulting map can only display a certain number of data points legibly. This means that the dataset you download from this page does not contain all available stations for a given state :/

3 Generated Chart

CSV Data Excel Download

If you notice plotting issues with the image above, please contact us and provide the URL address currently shown by your web browser.

IEM Daily Features using this plot

The IEM Daily Features found on this website often utilize plots found on this application. Here is a listing of features referencing this plot type.

09 May 2024: Driest areas need more rain
26 Aug 2022: Different Droughts
17 Jun 2022: Drought Dots