Berry Prairie Weather

In the beginning of January 2012, we installed a weather station on the northeast corner of the Berry Prairie.  We wanted to be able to measure precipitation, wind speed, temperature, humidity, etc. so we could track this information for years to come.

Holy Data!

The data is very detailed - the weather station takes 26 types of measurements every half hour of every single day!  Those measurements include wind speed, direction and highs, temperature outside, inside, highs and lows, humidity, dew point, wind chill, heat index, precipitation, degree days, and the list goes on.  The image below is a snapshot of the spreadsheet containing all of the data.  What you see is only 83 of 28,190 rows - and that's only for 10 months!  

We're able to put this data into graphic form.  The graph below shows temperature (red line) and precipitation (blue columns) for every half hour of every day of each month since January.
  

Why keep weather data?

Good question.  baseline data in case someone 100 years from now wants to know what the climate in Laramie, Wyoming was like in our present times.  And it's handy for research projects done all across campus and beyond.  In fact, we're using this data for a research project studying the microclimate on the green roof compared with other sites in the area.  More on that soon!

We're happy to share our weather data - contact berryctr@uwyo.edu if you want more information!

Written by Brenna Wanous Marsicek