> Lat/Lon is really the standard. [...] That all said, I'm a total noob and I have no "geospatial" background (just writing some software to deal with rain data

> Lat/Lon is really the standard. [...] That all said, I'm a total noob and I have no "geospatial" background (just writing some software to deal with rain data right now) So this isn't pro advice. The standard is X/Y+Spatial Reference. (the SR is usually out of band) If your spatial reference maps X to "latitude" and Y to "longitude", then so be it, but in general, I would expect a spatial reference which is applicable to an area that doesn't include the poles to map +X to East-ness and +Y to North-ness. (Spatial references near the poles get... interesting...) If your data doesn't have a spatial reference, then you don't have data, you have numbers. There are several reasons for this. First of all, there's the whole XY plane and all that. Secondly, there's also the fact that lat/lon/height coordinates, if you wish to preserve the right hand rule, translate to +north/+east/-up or north/east/down[0] coordinates, where elevations above sea level are negative, and the more you climb some mountain, the more negative your Z coordinate becomes. On the other hand, lon/lat/height becomes east/north/up, and the right hand rule is preserved. Source: this is my day job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_east_down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_east_down