Matt Risinger & Steve Baczek Discuss Water Management (and Using a Windrose): Episode 7 of their Build Science 101 Series
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This is the latest episode of their great series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP7lebvJpyY&t=23s
At minute 26:30 Steve talks about using a Windrose (which I’d never heard of before). Apparently it is a diagram that depicts the distribution of wind direction and speed at a location over a period of time. You can also use it to figure out the direction from which the most rain is going to be coming from and design and detail your buildings to be able to handle it.
You can log in and get free climate data from the Climate.gov website.
https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/wind-roses-charts-and-tabular-data
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So what he doesn't tell us is where the data comes from.
I've always chuckled when reading the directions on a package of shingles, and it says to shingle the ridge in the direction of the prevailing wind. How are you supposed to know that? I've always just done whatever was there when I started.
DC: According to the Climate.gov website, the weather data comes from:
"Selected stations (mostly airports) where hourly wind speed and direction are recorded".
And further down on the site, it says:
Where do these data come from?
The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) offers wind roses through its MRCC Application Tools Environment, called cli-MATE. Data are compiled and processed by the Climate Data Access Portal (Cli-DAP), which is maintained by the NOAA Regional Climate Centers (RCCs).