The National Weather Service in San Diego has introduced a new data bank on its homepage that makes it easy for the public to monitor changing temperatures and rainfall totals throughout its huge service area, as well as to compare the constantly updated numbers against historic trends.
Readers also can tell with a glance whether the risk of wildfires is rising or falling, data that is of special interest to people who live in areas close to highly flammable chaparral.
Until recently, such data was spread across many different sections of the weather service’s homepage, and much of it was catalogued in ways that could be difficult to read.
The San Diego office forecasts the weather for San Diego and Orange counties, the western half of Riverside County and portions of San Bernardino County, including the mountains and the Apple and Lucerne valleys. The region is home to more than 7 million people, a figure higher than the population of Maryland.