Friday, October 8, 2010

Burnside winds vs. McTavish winds

(Angela and Jan-Erik)

We have compared the wind directions and speeds at the McTavish weather station and the Burnside weather station to see if they are similar (if they were we could also assume FDA will have similar wind patterns).

Unfortunatly the 2 weather stations do not agree in their wind speeds (in the past hour McT is 6km/h while Burn is 16km/h) or their wind directions (in the past 24 hours the winds at Burnside were mainly SW and N while McT were mainly S and SW (see attached photos)).

So the questions I have in mind are:
1. Should we use wind data?
2. If yes, then from where? McT or Burn?
3. Should/Can we get our own anamomter?
4. Can it be installed on the roof and left unatended?


6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. What might end up happening is that we do what Pavlos suggested (take an anemometer to FDA roof) and then determine which wind direction is more prevalent at FDA and then use the corresponding wind station.

    We may find trends that mean that we need to use McT over BH during certain times of day or under specific meteorological conditions...

    I'll email Pavlos and find out about 3 & 4

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  3. Nice work finding the McTavish data. How do the datasets compare if they are averaged over the same timeframe (i.e., the McT data appears to be hourly averages)?

    Boz

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  4. (Angela and Jan-Erik)
    Me and Jan-Erik converted the Burnside data into hourly data (see 2nd photo for an example 22-23h on OCT 7th) then we compared that to the same hour for McTavish.

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  5. Cool - here is another knuckle-headed question. Do the BH and McT datasets both use the same convention for (1) wind direction (from or to?) and (2) wind speed (gusts or not?)?

    Boz

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  6. The convention for wind direction is always "from". But I suppose it's possible that one of these is using unconventional standards.

    Navin

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