Some Weather Stats

2013-03-24 16:20:54.000 – Steve Welsh,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist

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Recently I got to wondering what some of the weather averages and extremes have been since I started working up here on the Rockpile back in October 2007. A quick look through our F6 Monthly Data records pulled up some interesting numbers.

Winds have gusted over 120 mph in 16, and over 130 mph in 6, of those 66 months and twice at or over 140 mph (naturally I was off shift for both of these events). Our peak wind gust during this time was 145 mph back in March 2008 and the average wind speed has been 34.9 mph.

The average temperature through this period came out at 27.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a departure of 1.6 degrees F compared to our historical normal over these months (roughly six winters and five summers). Considering each month we’ve had 45 above, one exactly at, and 20 below the average historical temperatures. For record daily temperatures we’ve seen 18 tied maximums, 31 new maximums, 1 tied minimum and 6 new minimums along with one tied monthly maximum and one new monthly record high. The lowest temperature seen was -35 F, which occurred twice and the maximum was 69 F, which also occurred twice. We had four months where the maximum temperature never reached freezing point and eleven months with a max temperature of 65 degrees or more. In two months we saw minimums below -30 F, 12 months had minimums below -20 F and in 6 months the minimum temperature remained above the freezing mark. The warmest month in this time period was July 2010 which averaged 51.7 F and the coldest was January 2009 which came in at an even 0.0 degrees F.

I’m still working on the percentage of days in the fog (it’s a lot), days with precipitation and so on.

Since I’m just the IT guy, and certainly not a climatologist or statistician, I’m not going to attempt to draw any conclusions from this brief snapshot in time. It’ll be very interesting to see what the next few years bring though….

Steve Welsh,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist