Late Autumn Weathers

This is the first summary of three weather stations in South-east Tasmania of the Autumn months of April & May. This was performed in order to determine which locale had the best weather …and it was Midway Point, because you know what they say, “Midway always has the best weather!” and we don’t need any data to back that up.

Lets look at a few summaries for April & May…

It often gets pretty wind at midway, but is it the windiest? Representing the max wind speeds in a box plot we see that yes it is the windiest (perfect), but not on average*…

*dark black line indicates the average max wind speed (the box plots is basically a distribution/bell curve, except that it is a box). dots are outliers (or big one off gusts in this case)

A quick look at rainfall shows that it was pretty poor all round, with more in April & decreasing into May… Decreasing across location as well from howrah through to dodges - perhaps something to do with proximity to kunanyi?

Howrah was the wettest over two months with ~44mm. Midway had ~30mm, which was precisely the amount residents were hoping for. Dodges was mostly a dust bowl at 7.7mm.

It is also worth noting that the dodges station had 12 less days of data, so mysterious! Perhaps some overdue maintenance?

## # A tibble: 3 x 4
##   Locn   count  mean   sum
##   <chr>  <int> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Dodges    38 0.202  7.69
## 2 Howrah    49 0.896 43.9 
## 3 Midway    50 0.606 30.3

Lets examine relationships between variables…

Here is a plot of the strength of correlation between some of the data (from data across all sites):

The size of the circle indicates how strong the correlation between two variables is and the colour determines if the correlation is positive (blue) or negative (red). Hences variables have strong positive relationships with themselves…

One notable feature of the correlation is the weak relationship of precipitation with all other variables - most likely because there was so little of it!

From this we can also explore a relationship further, with, say the strongest negative correlation - temp_max & humidity_min across our three stations…

This illustrates how with lower temps higher humidity occurs, and that it holds true for each location. You’ll also note that midway had the coldest day over the two months, but was not (phew!) the coldest on average. That title goes to the antartic tundra of howrah! Av. temps summarised below…

## # A tibble: 3 x 4
##   Locn   count  mean    sd
##   <chr>  <int> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Dodges    38  14.1  2.91
## 2 Howrah    49  12.5  3.57
## 3 Midway    50  13.1  3.36

So there you are, it certainly appears as if midway does indeed have the best weather, however if calm, dry skies is more your thing, then perhaps dodges is your preferred destination? For those trying to maintain a lawn, living in Howrah will reduce your water use marginally. Let’s hope winter was a wetter proposition…