The California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS) is an extremely useful, if not necessary, tool for agricultural professionals. CIMIS provides daily and hourly weather information collected from a network of over 100 weather station sites throughout the State. Information from CIMIS was originally available only via dial-up modem, or via Telnet to CIMIS' internet site. With the advent of the World Wide Web, CIMIS information was available in a much more user-friendly fashion. However, in order to provide information in a user-friendly manner, CIMIS has lost some of its power and usefulness.

The World Wide Web site maintained by CIMIS offers users the ability to download two forms of data:

  1. The previous seven days, or
  2. The previous twelve months

While this is useful, there are some drawbacks. First, the user can not specify a time period of interest. So if you needed daily ETo for a period other than the previous seven days, your were out of luck. Second, you had to download data for all the weather stations in a particular county. If you live near a county line, and you wanted to average ETo for two stations that happen to straddle a county line, you need to download two counties' worth of CIMIS data. Not very efficient.


Typical Telnet and FTP screenshots

While some users are comfortable opening up a Telnet session, then downloading a file using FTP, most of us are more comfortable in a Windows-based graphical environment. To help users make the most of CIMIS, JMLord, Inc. has developed InetCIMIS. This utility allows you to connect to CIMIS using your ISP. InetCIMIS automates the most common task of requesting information for a specific range of dates, and for a specific station. InetCIMIS does the following:

  • Opens a Telnet session with the CIMIS system
  • Runs an automated session that generates a data file for download
  • Opens a FTP session with the CIMIS system
  • Downloads the previously generated file to your hard disk
The CIMIS data is then stored on your hard drive in plain text format. Ready for import into your favorite application or text editor.

InetCIMIS is complimentary ( FREE ) for individual users. Businesses are required to pay a one-time, unlimited-use fee of $250.00 (US). Limited support is available to individual users (setup and installation issues only).

Currently, InetCIMIS is in BETA release . This means that there may be some bugs left in the utility. We have tested this utility thoroughly, but having many users test this utility and provide feedback, is the best way to find all the things that we may have not anticipated. InetCIMIS requires Win95/98 or Windows NT.

To download InetCIMIS just follow these steps:

  1. Download NETCIMIS.EXE to your hard disk
  2. Run NETCIMIS.EXE. It is a WinZip self-executable file that will install InetCIMIS to "c:\program files\jmlord\cimis" by default. You may change the installation directory during this step.
  3. The program is ready to run!!

To run the application:

  1. Go to the install directory an run "InetCIMIS.EXE".
  2. Enter the proper CIMIS station number (click here for a complete list of CIMIS stations and their location).
  3. Enter a download file name and path for the data you will receive.
  4. Enter the dates for which you wish to receive information.
  5. Press the "Get Data" button.
  6. Let the automated script run. [IMPORTANT: Allow the script to finish completely . Closing the status window prematurely may prevent internet connection from closing normally. ]
  7. Open the downloaded file in your spreadsheet or text editor.

InetCIMIS Main Screen

To download InetCIMIS, click here.

To send feedback or report a bug go to the Bugs page.

JMLord Inc. thanks you for the opportunity to serve your needs. If there are other things that we may do to help you just let us know.

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