title: Reading .csv data from URL in python: extra lines
body: <p>First post on stackoverflow, and a newbie to python. I'm trying to read weather data from a location from wunderground. It should be straightforward:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import csv
  import urllib2   
  url = 'http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KMDLAURE4&amp;day=9&amp;month=6&amp;year=2013&amp;graphspan=day&amp;format=1'
  response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
  cr = csv.reader(response)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, when I do this, I get an extra line in between all the data. So if I examine the first few lines of the .csv output, I get the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    cr.next()
      Out[210]: []
  
      cr.next()
      Out[211]: 
      ['Time',
     blah blah blah fields redacted
       'DateUTC&lt;br&gt;']
  
      cr.next()
      Out[212]: 
      ['2013-06-09 00:07:00',
        blah blah blah data redacted
       '2013-06-09 04:07:00',
       '']
  
      cr.next()
      Out[213]: ['&lt;br&gt;']
  
      cr.next()
      Out[214]: 
      ['2013-06-09 00:22:00',
       blah blah blah data redacted,
       '2013-06-09 04:22:00',
       '']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I could just loop over the file, and throw away every other line, or check to see if the line only contains &lt; br > and get rid of it. To me, that's an inelegant solution, as the real 'problem' is due to the reading of the text. This seems like an 'opening in binary' or codec problem, but how do I check? Thanks!</p>