Every now and then I take a look at the data in my weather center to see how things are going. Have we gotten a lot of rain this year, or a little? Has the weather finally cooled off?
One thing I hadn’t done before is just look at the overnight data and see what happened. When I did so, I noticed that something interesting occurred between 2 and 4 AM. The data in the plot below should help you figure out what it was. (You might need to click for the full version to really see it; the legend shows that purple is wind direction, red is outside temperature, and blue is wind speed.)
Or maybe a simple table would be easier to read; I’ve restricted the data to the time period of interest:
Time Temperature (F) Wind Direction Wind Speed (MPH)
2011-10-10 02:00:00 73.2 N/A 0.0
2011-10-10 02:05:00 73.2 N/A 0.0
2011-10-10 02:10:00 73.2 N/A 0.0
2011-10-10 02:15:00 73.3 SSW 1.0
2011-10-10 02:20:00 73.3 SSW 1.0
2011-10-10 02:25:00 73.3 SSW 1.0
2011-10-10 02:30:00 73.3 SSW 1.0
2011-10-10 02:35:00 73.3 SSW 1.0
2011-10-10 02:45:00 76.3 SSE 3.0
2011-10-10 02:55:00 76.3 SSE 3.0
2011-10-10 03:00:00 76.3 SSE 3.0
2011-10-10 03:05:00 76.3 SSE 3.0
2011-10-10 03:15:00 78.3 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:20:00 78.3 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:25:00 78.3 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:30:00 78.3 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:35:00 78.3 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:40:00 78.3 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:45:00 78.7 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:50:00 78.7 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 03:55:00 78.7 SE 4.0
2011-10-10 04:00:00 78.7 SE 4.0
I’ll post the answer later in the week, along with the explanation.