Does anybody have a source for historical wind data? I am planning stand locations and want a general idea of the occurrence of certain wind directions with time of year.
Alway like your web charting sites you always track down Xfarmer. I really think if I asked the type a tree coyotes prefer to piss on you could find a gov site showing such. I mean this as a compliment.Never, ever give up!
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/lcd
If you can figure it out, there's hourly wind speed, gusts, and direction for 1,600 stations in the United States. Is it useful? Up to you....
Here's a snapshot of Christmas Day data for somewhere in Mississippi. Downloaded as a comma seperated value (csv) file and opened with Excel. The attachment, below is the same source but presented in .pdf format. Its for somewhere in MN.
View attachment 18014
That got me thinking, which can often lead me down rabbit holes for days. But, does anyone have any experience with battery operated PWS that you've put at stand locations? Seems like you could take data for winds over a couple weeks at different stand sites to know exactly which winds did what at each stand making stand selection easier ahead of time.Wundermap on the Weatherunderground site shows data from thousands of PWS (personal weather stations). Some PWS have rapid fire updates...every 30 seconds or so.
PWS will show you the SURFACE wind for that exact location so terrain will have an influence as to why the surface wind may or may not match the prevailing wind.
Historical prevailing wind data can show us the overall trends for a region, but we need to apply prevailing direction to actual surface behavior. There are surface patterns that we can deduce from prevailing patterns but it can be difficult in some areas with intricate terrain.