Find all event listings for date range

This function will find all of the events in the US for a specified date range.

Usage

find_events(
  date_range = NULL,
  event_types = NULL,
  dist_limit = NULL,
  storm = NULL,
  include_narratives = FALSE,
  include_ids = FALSE,
  clean_damage = FALSE
)

Arguments

date_range

A character vector of length two with the start and end dates to pull data for (e.g., c("1999-10-16", "1999-10-18")).

event_types

Character vector with the types of storm events that should be kept. The default value (NULL) keeps all types of events. See the "Details" vignette for this package for more details on possible event types.

dist_limit

A numeric scalar with the distance (in kilometers) that a county must be from the storm's path to be included. The default (NULL) does not eliminate any events based on distance from a storm's path. This option should only be used when also specifying a storm with the storm parameter.

storm

A character string with the name of the storm to pull storm events data for. This string must follow the format "[storm-name]-[4-digit storm year]" (e.g., "Floyd-1999"). Currently, this functionality only works for storms included in the extended hurricane best tracks, which covers 1988 to 2015.

include_narratives

A logical value for whether the final data data frame should include columns for episode and event narratives (TRUE) or not (FALSE, the default)

include_ids

A logical value for whether the final data frame should include columns for event and episode IDs (TRUE) or not (FALSE, the default). If included, these IDs could be used in some cases to link events to data in the "fatalities" or "locations" files available through the NOAA Storm Events database.

clean_damage

TRUE / FALSE of whether additional cleaning should be done to try to exclude incorrect damage listings. If TRUE, any property or crop damages for which the listing for that single event exceeds all other damages in the state combined for the event dataset, the damages for that event listing will be set to missing. Default is FALSE (i.e., this additional check is not performed). In some cases, it seems that a single listing by forecast zone gives the state total for damages, and this option may help in identifying and excluding such listings (for example, one listing in North Carolina for Hurricane Floyd seems to be the state total for damages, rather than a county-specific damage estimate).

Examples

if (FALSE) {
# Events by date range
find_events(date_range = c("1999-09-10", "1999-09-30"))

# Events within a certain distance and time range of a tropical storm
find_events(storm = "Floyd-1999", dist_limit = 200)

# Limit output to events that are floods or flash floods
find_events(storm = "Floyd-1999", dist_limit = 200, event_types = c("Flood", "Flash Flood"))
}