Is anyone here a trained meteorologist?

Column 10–12 seem to give wind speed and direction and the last columns refer to peak wind speed and direction. I’d guess speed is in mph and direction is in degrees.

I’m guessing, but from what it looks like to me and what I know about weather, I’d guess the following:

Up at the top it is giving you a column for temperature, precipitation, snow, wind, sunshine, sky, and peak wind.

Then each of those is broken down further. It starts with temperature which is divided by the day, max temp, min temp, average temp, “DEP” I’m not sure about (possibly the dew point), “HDD” is most likely humidity, “CDD” I’m not sure about.
Then you go into precipitation. I believe “WTR” is for rain, “SNW” for snow.
Then you go into the snow column. I’m not sure about “12Z DPTH” but I think it’s the depth of snow (compared to the accumulation).
Then you go into the winds average speed and max speed. I’m not sure what “2MIN DIR” would be, but I’d guess something with direction.
Then the sunshine and sky category. I’m guessing they are for minimal sun, probable sun, and sunny skies, not sure what the “WX” would be.
Then the last two are the peak wind speed and direction.

@lilikoi Degrees…that makes sense. But those are some REALLY high numbers for speed it seems. Maybe not?

How would I equate degree to direction? It’s not important for my purposes really, but now I’m curious….

Excellent @Seaofclouds and @lilikoi! It really makes sense now, assuming the wind speed isn’t too high. I totally missed to headings at the top @Seaofclouds. I tend to not read everything in emails either….thanks so so SO much. Have a sandwich. {Mod says, YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE!!!}

The wind speed could be right, it just depends on the place. Right now, with where I am, I’d believe that to be pretty accurate for wind speeds around here.

Well, this was in December of 09 in South Central Kansas…...maybe…they aren’t too high.

I saw a tornado once. It was COOL!! It was white….....But that is off topic. Ahem. These are average daily winds, not storm winds, which can be pretty bad around here. Well, since I know where to go to find it, I’ll go look for a day when we had straight line winds this past spring and do some comparison. Good idea @mowens! (See what getting off topic can do!:)

I’m in North Eastern Kansas and that sounds pretty similar to what we had going on over here in December.

Thanks @Seaofclouds! I guess I just compare it to driving in a car and sticking your hand out the window….and, you know, I guess 8 to 52 mph isn’t that far off, if they’re just in gusts. 52 mph sustained would be memorable, but a gust wouldn’t be.

HDD is heating degree days Usually 65 degrees – (Hi temp + low temp)/2 . It is a measure of how much your heating system will need to work that day.
CDD is cooling degree days Usually (Hi temp + low temp)/2 -72 It is a measure of how much your A/C will need to work that day.

@worriedguy My husband will LOVE that! Wow…thank you!

0 degrees is typically north, 180 being south.

I’m printing “selections” so fast my printer is smoking. Methinks I should just print the whole thread….
@lilikoi Thank you….awesome ya’ll.

Boo. Ya’ll could have asked me… Fluther’s resident meteorologist.

@Seaofclouds and all: “Wx” is our abbreviation for the word “weather”. In this context, it would report any weather occurring at the time (fog, drizzle, rain, etc). Each of those number in that column stands for another wx type. For example, on the 6th, the weather at the time was 1=fog or mist, 6 = freezing rain and 8 = smoke or haze (in other words, nasty. But there’s not meteorological code for that).

@worriedguy was right on about the HDD and CDD being heating and cooling degree days…

I think you all had the wind column taken care of… the Sunshine data is all “M” or “missing”. Stations (a lot of them) stopped reporting sunshine data, so all of these will be missing. Some stations still report it, so that’s why the columns are there.

Anything else I missed?

Oh, about the way wind direction is reported. Wind is given in cardinal directions, and is given in the direction the wind is blowing from. Imagine an axis . On that image in the wiki article, North is at zero degrees (or 360), East is 90 degrees, South is 180 and West is 270 degrees. When I say the wind is at 90 degrees, that means the wind is coming from the East. This is tricky. It doesn’t mean which way the wind is going, but rather, where the wind is coming from. So if you hear a meteorologist say that there are stron “westerlies”, that means the wind is coming from the West (270 degrees).

@Les Ah hell. Printing thread!!!! XXX OOO ((( )))!!!