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I know weather.com will give you averages, precipitation, etc but is there a way to find out more detail - wind strength, avg windchill, comfort zones, whatever. I know 32F in Iowa is and isn't the same as 32F in mid-PA, IA has a much colder "feel"
I mention wind because that can make a world of difference in winter especially for the northern states. I'm trying to compare areas to help decide on moving possibilities.
The City-Data pages provide a lot of historical information for lots of places. There are charts with averages for temperature, wind speed, rainfall, and so on. They also compare to the national averages. All you have to do is go to the City-Data homepage and type in the name of the city you want to check out. Here's an example of the link for Los Angeles, CA.:
Yeah, Wunderground.com has network of thousands of private weather stations (you can buy software/hardware for your PC to make it part of the network). I use Wunderground.com all the time to keep track of the weather conditions down on my land in SE Arizona. There happens to be a Wunderground.com private weather station about 1,000 feet east of my land so I can get info related to my specific neighborhood down there. It keeps track of temp, wind (gusts and sustained, precip, humidity, pressure, and dew point) and has readings for every hour (with a few small gaps) going back 3 1/2 years. There are also of course averages for temps etc. Finally you can also take the historical data and download into an Excel format for further analyzation.
To find personal weather stations near your area of interest, start here:
PS When you combine rain gauge readings from a private weather station with the new zoomable/scrollable weather radar map feature on Weather.com you can see EXACTLY where the rain is (zooming in close enough to see individual streets etc) and then take note of the rainfall totals that came from the passing rainshower. Very cool indeed for a weather freak like me.
Thank you LB. I didn't know that. I'm a weather nut and love this kind of stuff!
You're welcome.
Yeah, it's all pretty cool isn't it. For Arizona I'm fortunate that I can also utilize Rainlog.org. It doesn't care about most weather aspects - focusing instead on rainfall totals. The cool thing about it though it is that it interacts with Google Earth so that the rainfall totals at their various weather stations can be integrated and visually displayed with the other cool stuff on that tool.
That's pretty cool too (no pun intended). Man those temps are wayyyyyyyy too cold for me!
While were talking weather/temp related online tools, I'm a big lover of the tropics and warm water for swimming/snorkeling. I've found this tool very useful in trying decide what time of year to set a beach-related vacation:
It's the NOAA coastal water temperature site - showing real-time (actual) and average coastal water temps (for each month) for various places along the US Coastline (including Hawaii and Alaska). Pretty enlightning information really. For example it becomes very clear that in spite of Hawaii's reputation (deserved) for warm weather, the coastal waters of Hawaii are MUCH cooler than those of the Gulf Coast (not even close really) - or even large sections of the US Atlantic Coast. Looking at the data, it becomes REALLY clear why those areas have so many problems with hurricanes, while Hawaii (which is actually at a lower latitude) has so few. The relatively shallow and enclosed waters of the Caribbean and Gult of Mexico really warm up.
Wow! Thanks for the suggestions and sites - you can get much more specific info than I had hoped which is wonderful. I agree that coastal water temp one would be great for planning vacations near coastlines.
I know weather.com will give you averages, precipitation, etc but is there a way to find out more detail - wind strength, avg windchill, comfort zones, whatever. I know 32F in Iowa is and isn't the same as 32F in mid-PA, IA has a much colder "feel"
I mention wind because that can make a world of difference in winter especially for the northern states. I'm trying to compare areas to help decide on moving possibilities.
Yes, wind seems to make the most difference in cold, then having or not having bright sunshine or high/low relative humidity.
Being dry and/or sunny at 32 F is very nice, but with a stong enough wind neither will matter.
*Thanks for the like Lord Balfor! I love to swim in ocean too.
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