Topic: WL data export - wind directionality

[sho23]

Morning folks.

Right now we have a script that goes to Weatherlink.com and scrape all the information we want. That works great most of the time, though sometimes we have a gap due to something broken somewhere. My question pertains to what I try to do to back fill the data via manual generation from the weatherlink software.

I tried the browse and export, and the wind-related columns are:
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None of them actually gives a degree direction.

I tried the other report-making options (NOAA daily, etc) but none of them produces wind direction in degree, even though the historical trend suggest that they are being logged. Any ideas? I'd like to have our database continuous and not having to convert and snap the wind direction to the closest (NNW/WNW/etc).

[johnd]

Local Weatherlink only logs direction in a single byte AFAICR so it can't store degree resolution data. Instead it stores 0-15 and 255. Other software can handle things differently.

[Mattk]

Wind direction resolution my be to the nearest Degree but only logs the dominant direction based on the most counters in one of the 16 wind direction buckets (22.5°) over the archive interval.

[sho23]

Humm

Thanks for the info. I went back and stared at it some more - sure enough, once I took out all the other wind variable, the data is really not that granular.
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I guess there's no going back and back filling it properly then. 

[Mattk]

For most purposes the 16 compass (22.5°) points are practical and in line with most meteorological reporting by official agencies. As you log a 15 minute archive then quite a lot of variation could exist over that time frame which would make a lesser direction resolution a little meaningless.