This wind climatology is based on historical data from NOAA’s
Unrestricted Mesoscale Analysis (URMA). See here. The dataset provides hourly wind speed and
direction for CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico on a horizontal
grid-spacing of 2.5 km for all domains except Alaska (3 km) and
Puerto Rico (1.25 km). URMA is based on the same system that provides
the Real Time Mesoscale Analysis (RTMA). Both RTMA and URMA are 2DVar
analysis systems that provide analyses of National Digital Forecast
Database parameters. While RTMA is considered for situational
awareness, URMA is considered for verification/validation. URMA also
serves as a critical component in the National Blend of Models (NBM)
program, as it is used for calibration and validation. URMA is a
modeling system based on 2-dimensional variational analysis of
surface sensible weather fields. Thus, users of this product should
be aware the outputs are modeled and not direct observations.
CONUS data is compiled into monthly averages for 10 meter wind speed
with frequency using hourly data to bin direction and speed used in
wind rose charts. Gust hours are totaled for each month.
Time periods for the tool were expanded to include Seasonal and El
Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Seasonal are averaged over a 3
month period: Winter (December, January, Febraury), Spring (March,
April, May), Summer (June, july, August), and Fall (September,
October, November). ENSO periods can span months and years (Episodes by Season). Monthly wind data over each
episode is averaged, similar to seasonal, and catagorized based on
warm (El Niño) and cold (La El Niña) designation based on the Oceanic
Niño Index (ONI). Neutral episodes are not currently available.
High/Low wind months are calculated by taking the mean 10 meter
wind speed for each grid point over the entire climatology
(1985-2022) and ranking them. Find the 10th and 90th percentile of
the point and compare it with each month and year. The result is the
number of months for each year that is above/below these percentiles.
To learn more about the charts you can take the tutorial here.
