NZ's least windiest place - Arrowtown?!

[stuffed]

Was told that Arrowtown is the least windiest place in NZ! Ok how can I prove that?
Have about 7 years of data.
Thanks

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[Mark]

Hi Stuffed what does your data say?.

[stuffed]

Hi there - I have no idea what to look for! It is all in huge XL spreadsheets by year and then each month.
Guess need to average one of the data columns?
Thanks

[JennyLeez]

Our data summary gives you the last going on 2 years.

You can arrange columns from lowest to highest by clicking on column headings.

Click on Arrowtown for your break down.
http://www.localweather.net.nz/smf/nzlwf-member-historical-data/
Thats would be around 95 stations over that period.

Do you want to prove them right or wrong?

Also with your own spreadsheet, make tables ( year/month/all time) and then you can arrange from high to low plus add an average column.

Cheers

[stuffed]

Hi Jenny - thanks - just interested - not too concerned whatever the results!
What info do you come up with?!
Cheers
Jim

[JennyLeez]

I have just done a quick 2013 year average across 103 stations.
Your average wind speed came in 53rd

Your highest gust for 2013 76.3
Highest average 50.4

I presume it is the metservice who has stated this. Remember their data is sourced from airports to the main so would be very different to what our PWS are reporting.

[JennyLeez]

Ok the windrun makes it more feasible.

You average out at 88th highest out of the 103.

Reefton is also down bottom of all wind data.

[Rwood]

Very hard to assess the least windy locations, as windspeeds vary so much over short distances. Fog-prone localities like Taumarunui and Reefton are good contenders though.

[stuffed]

Hi troops - now I am neither a meteorologist or a mathetician but would not be the best way to determine wind average be by the recorded wind speed rather that gusts?
My Excel spreadsheet has the data recorded every minute by month. By averaging the wind speed column for each month then averaging that for the year - for the year 2012 come up with an average of 2.18.
See what everyone thinks about that and if that is the consensus will go back to when my records start in 2006 and average it all out!
 

[JennyLeez]

Good morning,

Brian will have more knowledge here but yes average the month. Then you can manually add the 12 up and divide by 12.

For 2012 I have 6 months of Arrowtown. The average High wind speed is 21.6.
For comparison Dargaville's is 37.4 and Castle Hill 9.

Wind Average - High
What are you recording. The 1 min, 5 min, 1 hour or 24 hour.
When we were putting the Summary together last year I noticed a huge difference between the 1 min, 5 min compared to the days average. Hence to get the closest comparison we could, members were asked to do some tweeting.
We use the day average.

Windrun average
Do you record the windrun as to me that would be a good indication of wind passing your location.
For your 6 months I have an average of 94km / per day for arrowtown.
Dargaville 459.1 and Reefton 50.2
(From my records Reefton by far has the lowest wind data.)

Going through our spreadsheet that 2.2 appears a tad low.
That looks more like your 1 min or 3 min average.

Sorry not much help. Brian will be more useful I am sure

Cheers Jim.

[stuffed]

Sorry don't think there is anything about windrun on my system.
I should have mentioned that just used Excel's AVG (average) Formula for the 40,000+ rows (every minute) of data each month so the result should be accurate! 

[Rwood]

You need to average the windruns, not the maximum gusts at any timeframe. Windrun gives you the actual average speed of the wind.

There are quite a number of sites on the CliFLo database that will give you the avergae windrun summarised in monhtly and annual values. There may also be some records for the daily windruns.

[stuffed]

So help me here - is Windspeed and Windrun the same? If not what is the difference?
Thanks.

[David]

Windspeed is just the current measure of the wind strength.
Think of wind run as the total "distance" travelled by the wind. Basically if your daily wind run was 240 km, then your average windspeed for the 24 hour period would be 10 km/h.

[JennyLeez]

The days windrun is the total wind that passes across your anemometer for the day. As David says, average that by 24 to give you the hours average.

So yesterday your total wind passing across was 58.3.
Divide by 24 for the average wind passing across each hour = 2.4 km/hr

The wind speed is just that. The speed in which it is passing. From Google:

Wind run is a meteorological term used to categorize or determine the total distance (or amount) of the traveled wind over a period of time.

As Rupert also says. This is what you should be using to determine whether you have the least wind across New Zealand. Not the wind speed or gust.