|
|
Post by nei on Mar 25, 2019 12:51:10 GMT -5
Made weatherboxes of the average climate of each of the continental lower 48 US states. One averaging by the state area "area weighted", one average weighting by the state's population "population weighted" reflecting what the average state resident experience. Climate data is 30 year normals (1981-2010) gridded PRISM normals, which interpolates from most ASOS and COOP stations. Grid is 2.5' (~4 km) resolution; coarse enough, some mountainous areas won't be captured precisely, there's finer scaled resolution but my population data isn't that fine-scaled and it would take too much computing power to process and store. Population is census tracts from the 2010 decennial census; which regridded to the PRISM grid. There's 48 weatherboxes so don't feel like typing commentary for each of them. The area-weighted vs population-weighted difference is smaller than I expected; west coast states had unsurprisingly the largest difference, a few other western states had large differences, as well as Maine and New York. Population-weighted average for New York looked like an inner NYC suburb, while the area weighted somewhere rather far north upstate. In some states, especially western ones, the average climate didn't look like a real climate in anywhere inside the state. So, if I want to go further with this, it'd be interesting to find where in each state is closest to average. Will make another thread on the best way to do that. Alright, here are the states.                |
|
|
|
Post by nei on Mar 25, 2019 12:55:21 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by nei on Mar 25, 2019 13:05:22 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Babu on Mar 25, 2019 13:25:50 GMT -5
Now combine them all for a national USA one. Also, you forgot Alaska and Hawaii
|
|
|
|
Post by Steelernation on Mar 25, 2019 13:30:18 GMT -5
Nebraska by area is my favorite one. That’s an A-.
Kansas by area, Colorado by population and both Utah ones are quite good too.
Biggest surprise was how cool the summers are for Montana. The whole eastern half is well warmer and there’s lots of valleys too...
Looks like Nevada and Arizona have the biggest difference. Not surprising although I thought California would have been higher too.
|
|
|
|
Post by Yahya Sinwar on Mar 25, 2019 14:18:26 GMT -5
The North Carolina averag looks exactly like somewhere south of Winston Salem or north of Charlotte on the I-85 corridor. Very much a stereotypical piedmont climate.
|
|
|
|
Post by Nidaros on Mar 25, 2019 15:27:39 GMT -5
Interesting, and must have taken some time, nei!
For Norway there would be a huge difference.
Population weighted would be a slightly more oceanic Oslo - slightly milder winters and cooler summers. An approximation for temps could be:
Area weighted would be....hard to say, but the geographic midpoint is near Steinkjer using land volume.
32 % of the land is 0-299 m asl, 29 % is 300 m - 599 m asl, 19 % is 600-899 m, 20 % is 900 m and higher.
Nordli is 433 m asl some 100 km north of Steinkjer so a good approximation:
|
|
|
|
Post by Babu on Mar 25, 2019 17:53:16 GMT -5
Interesting, and must have taken some time, nei!
For Norway there would be a huge difference.
Population weighted would be a slightly more oceanic Oslo - slightly milder winters and cooler summers. An approximation for temps could be:
Area weighted would be....hard to say, but the geographic midpoint is near Steinkjer using land volume.
32 % of the land is 0-299 m asl, 29 % is 300 m - 599 m asl, 19 % is 600-899 m, 20 % is 900 m and higher.
Nordli is 433 m asl some 100 km north of Steinkjer so a good approximation:
So basically it'd be Værnes or Kristiansand (minus sunshine) |
|
|
|
Post by tij on Mar 25, 2019 17:59:28 GMT -5
Washington and Oregon population weighted are of course the best ones... Rhode island of course is one of the best ones apart from these! Rhode Island area weighed is Cfb!
|
|
|
|
Post by nei on Mar 25, 2019 23:15:29 GMT -5
Now combine them all for a national USA one. here 'ya go. Excludes Alaska and Hawaii and of course Puerto Rico  no I didn't; PRISM doesn't have data for Alaska and Hawaii |
|
|
|
Post by Babu on Mar 26, 2019 4:34:58 GMT -5
Now combine them all for a national USA one. here 'ya go. Excludes Alaska and Hawaii and of course Puerto Rico no I didn't; PRISM doesn't have data for Alaska and Hawaii Yeah I figured it wasn:t your fault. Astonishing work Nei! |
|
|
|
Post by alex992 on Mar 26, 2019 6:50:07 GMT -5
Great work nei!!
The states the seem most similar to the USA area weighted averages seem to be (unsurprisingly) the middle swath of states (VA, WV, KY, MO, KS, CO, UT).
Lower 48 population weighted looks surprisingly a lot like Nashville, thought it would be cooler.
|
|
|
|
Post by Speagles84 on Mar 26, 2019 6:51:48 GMT -5
nei The area weighed Pennsylvania is very near my exact climatical averages. I knew the Philadelphia, Allentown, Harrisburg etc (Southeast warm quadrant) of our state would skew the population weighted averages. Pittsburgh Erie and Scranton are not big enough to outweigh the SEPA
|
|
|
|
Post by jgtheone on Mar 26, 2019 7:38:50 GMT -5
Excellent work!
California area is my favourite one.
|
|
|
|
Post by Moron on Mar 26, 2019 10:04:55 GMT -5
A god amongst men. He's only gone and done it
|
|
|
|
Post by Wildcat on Mar 26, 2019 11:19:05 GMT -5
Lower 48 population weighted looks surprisingly a lot like Nashville, thought it would be cooler. Yeah, surprisingly it's close to my ideal. The Lower 48 area weighted has similar highs to Lexington, but with cooler minima. |
|
|
|
Post by omegaraptor on Mar 26, 2019 11:44:18 GMT -5
Here I was thinking WA would be hotter in summer and drier by area because of Eastern WA...
|
|
|
|
Post by Crunch41 on Mar 26, 2019 22:31:08 GMT -5
nei This is awesome I just have one thing to point out. You have two copies of Washington and nothing from Wisconsin. If you fix that I will be happy.
|
|
|
|
Post by nei on Mar 27, 2019 10:47:09 GMT -5
Here I was thinking WA would be hotter in summer and drier by area because of Eastern WA... That's what I would have assumed, too. I guess it's cause the really wet areas of Washington even if a smaller percentage of the area than the dry areas, are much wetter than Seattle and other cities with lots of people. And few live in the temperate rainforest biome. Yahya Sinwar found a website that has average state climate trend. Doesn't identify how it averages, but I assume it must be area weighted. Setting the normal period to 1981-2010 has a January mean precipitation of 6.09" and February mean precipitation of 4.28". January is off by 0.3", February only 0.1". Close to my values but not exact; their gridding method is likely different than PRISM though based off the same stations. And maybe they averaged over the grid a slightly different way? So mine I think reasonably match "correct" values, which is comforting. Less comforting is that I just did something that already exists, but maybe the population weighted numbers are something hasn't been done? www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/statewide/time-series/45/pcp/1/1/1980-2019?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1981&lastbaseyear=2010The Washington State populated-weighted numbers look like Seattle, which make sense since about 2/3rds of the state lives in the Puget Sound region; and the places wetter than the Puget Sound probably cancel out the ones drier. |
|
|
|
Post by Crunch41 on Apr 9, 2019 17:03:17 GMT -5
|
|
