Add Missing Dates

Description

HOB Tools requires the removal of any gaps within a dataset because modeling, analyses, and graphing in other tools assume that input data are continuous and any dates with missing data are denoted as missing with a "-99" value typically. This tool analyzes a dataset for gaps and adds the missing dates into the proper location.

Discussion of the Output Data
The file contains all the original data along with all dates that are missing. Data associated with each date missing from the dataset are output as "-99" to denote missing (see Fig. 1 below).

Figure 1. In this example, the dataset on the left is missing October 1983. Running this tool adds October 1983 into the proper location (dataset on the right), but the temperature data are denoted as missing (i.e., “-99”). This tool also adds days to the start of the dataset when the first date with data is not the first day of the month. For example, if the dataset starts on 12 June 1983, then this tool will add 1 June 1983 through 11 June 1983 into the dataset in the proper location.

Input

Input File
Select the input file by clicking on "Browse" and navigating to the proper file.

Input Data Format
The input data can be in one of eight different formats as shown in Figure 2 below.

Each "/" is a tab (i.e., data should be tab-delimited).

Figure 2. The user selects the specific format under "Data Format". In this example, the user has input a dataset with eight columns (Year in Column 1, Month in Column 2, Day in Column 3, and Min Temperature in Column 4, Max Temperature in Column 5, Precipitation in Column 6, Snow in Column 7, and Snow Depth in Column 8).

Start Row
This input is the row number where the main data to be processed begin in the dataset. An example of how row numbers are entered is shown in Figure 2 located in the Running HOB Tools topic.

Output

Output File
Select the file and location where the new data will be stored.

Output File Header
Information entered here will be output in the first line of the output file.