RAWS Station Wind Roses product

aka Diurnal Surface Wind Pattern Analysis

• Direct link to Product Listing (remember to set your location)
  

Available Output

Output products are wind roses showing climatological distributions of:
[click name for definition]

• Surface wind speed and direction

Note:  Here "surface" winds are measured at ~ 20 ft above ground.  Output is divided into "day" and "night" periods (see below) and is shown for a single calendar month.

General Discussion

• These wind roses are created using all available surface wind observations from the Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS) data.  RAWS data are provided by the Western Regional Climate Center at the Desert Research Institute.
• Data is divided into "day" and "night" periods based on Local Standard Time.  Day is 11am to 6pm.  Night is 1am to 7am.
  
• Wind roses are done by calendar month.
  
• Different weather stations will contain different amounts of data.  All data available for that station (in the appropriate calendar month) are used.
• The RAWS station located closest to the location of interest (the location set in the portal site) is used, regardless of elevation.
  

How to use

• The relative wind strength can help determine the atmosphere's ability to remove smoke from the area.
• Additionally the wind direction can help determine the likely overall transport direction.
  
• By dividing the wind roses as "day" and "night", the prevalence (or lack thereof) of quiescent periods or reverse flow periods at night can be seen separate from the typically more active daytime period.  These types of periods can cause smoke to be trapped or sucked back into the area.
  

How to read a wind rose

• The wind rose shows directional angle, with North being up, South being down, etc...
  
• Data is binned into various directional angles.  For each directional bin, the amount of time the winds were in that direction is shown by the overall length of the bar shown.
  
• Additionally, the distribution of wind speeds are shown within each directional bar by color coding the wind speed into bins.  Both the relative proportion of the wind speed categories, as well as the absolute % time in that wind speed and directional bin can be determined.
  

Navigating the product

• The left wind rose shows the "day" winds.
• The right wind rose shows the "night" winds.
• The station name and location information are shown in the upper left corner of each wind rose.
• The period of data shown is listed in the lower left corner of each wind rose.
• The wind rose scale is shown in the upper right corner.
• The calendar month shown is listed in the lower right corner, as is the hour period shown.

• Blowup of a single wind rose: