Ticker for January 16, 2003

                
MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
January 16, 2003   January 16, 2003   January 16, 2003   January 16, 2003


Windroses Show Seasonal Patterns, Too!

Windrose Appreciation Week plods on.  Today's - er, tonight's - Ticker
shows the seasonal pattern of wind distribution taken from eight years
of Mesonet data (that's nine million -nine million!- wind observations).

Take a look at the following pages:
https://content.mesonet.org/ticker/archive/20030116/spring.html
https://content.mesonet.org/ticker/archive/20030116/summer.html
https://content.mesonet.org/ticker/archive/20030116/autumn.html
https://content.mesonet.org/ticker/archive/20030116/winter.html

The spring and autumn months look quite similar: southerly and
southeasterly winds prevail.  The major difference (and this is
tough to see in the graphs, so take our word for it): autumn features
the most occurrences of calm winds of the four seasons (3.0% statewide),
while spring offers the least (1.7%).

Summer is dominated by southerly flow throughout the state, with
barely a hint of any wind from the northwestern half of the compass.
This signal is so strong that even southwesterly flow is somewhat
uncommon during the summer months (this surprised the entire Ticker
staff).  Also, even though summer offers the smallest average wind
speed of the four seasons, calm winds occur less often in summer
than in autumn.  This is partly due to the warm, gentle southerly
breezes so common on summer nights.

Winter offers northerly winds in doses not seen in any other season.
The winds are distributed in a bimodal pattern, where northerly and
southerly winds co-dominate the distribution.  This is climatological
evidence of what we've experienced just this month: a cyclic pattern
of cold air invasions with subsequent recoveries (as those cold
anti-cyclones slide off to the east).

We hope this late night Ticker leaves you well-seasoned (!) in wind
climatology.  Tomorrow, we'll play with Oklahoma's mountains and
explore local effects.