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Data: Wind Speed
The WeatherLink samples the wind speed reading from the station a number of times during the interval (the actual number depends on the archive interval). Those readings are averaged to determine the average wind speed for the interval.
Present Wind Speed: This is refreshed every 15 minutes. In this photo, the anemometer cups for the wind velocity are suspended just underneath the wind vane which points the direction. These instruments are located 2 metres above ground level. |
| Above is the present wind speed at ground level at Race Rocks |
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The last 24 hours from the top of the Light Tower
Elevation: 37 metres. This wind speed and direction graph is adapted from www.bigwave.dave.It has been adapted from the Environment Canada website provided at: http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/marine/marine_e.html?C-WQK. |
This graph represents the windspeed over the past 8 hours at ground level at Race Rocks.
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DOING STATISTICS ON WIND at Race Rocks:
From the Environment Canada website provided at: http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/marine/marine_e.html?C-WQK.,there are several methods you can use in order to get historical monthly WIND speed and direction data from previous years:
HTML METHOD:
1. Go to the Environment Canada website at http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/canada_e.htm
2. Choose Customized Search
3. Choose Search Station by name, enter Race Rocks
4. Choose Race Rocks CS, the data for direction and speed occurs in the two right hand columns.
5. Save the page to your computer.
6. Open it in an html browser
7. Now you can cut and paste the two columns and the day of the month column to a spreadsheet such as EXCEL and proceed to make graphs or do statistics on the data. Send us your results of data manipulation and we will link to them here!
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 This graph represents the wind speed over the past 24 hours from the Race Rocks weather station at 6 metres elevation. This graphical interpretation is made possible by the website victoriaweather.ca |
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CSV METHOD:
 1.Following from # 4 above...In the panel "Navigation Options" Choose Bulk Data, CSV. Then import that .csv file into a Spreadsheet. This is an example of a chart made in EXCEL.
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 This graph represents the wind speed over the past week from the Race Rocks weather station at 6 metres elevation( 2 metres above ground level). This graphical interpretation is made possible by the website victoriaweather.ca |
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April, 2008: After some searching for us, Trisha Ralph of the Climate Services, Data Analysis and Archives Division at the Meteorological Services of Canada, has been able to find older archived wind data from years before 1984. Most of the coastal light stations had 45B wind anemometers at this time. The data was electronically archived. She has sent us HLY15 wind data beginning in 1969 and ending in 1984 for Race Rocks Light Station (1016641).
We have this data available for internal use and will eventually be able to produce some long term images as students work on the data.
Documentation on the data is available on the following website:
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/
prods_servs/documentation_index_e.html#main
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 This graph represents the wind speed over the past month from the Race Rocks weather station at 6 metres elevation. This graphical interpretation is made possible by the website victoriaweather.ca |
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Data: High Wind Speed
The wind instrument software is constantly checking for a new high wind speed. The highest wind speed value recorded during the interval gets written into archive memory.
See this link for past monthly maximum wind speeds from our Davis instrument at the ground level. http://www.victoriaweather. ca/extreme.php?id=72
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| High wind speed from the past week at Race Rocks |
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| ARCHIVED RECORDS OF YEARLY WIND DATA |
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The "Wind rose" above represents the last month of speed and direction. This graphical interpretation is made possible by the website victoriaweather.ca |
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| Click on for wind direction 2006 |
Click on above for wind chill 2006 |
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Data: Wind Chill
Wind chill is not stored in archive memory, rather it is calculated as the data gets written to the database file. The software calculates wind chill based on the temperature and wind speed readings for the archive period (that is, the temperature at the end of the archive interval and the average wind speed during the interval).
WeatherLink uses the Osczevski (1995) equation to calculate wind chill. This is the method adopted by the US National Weather Service in September of 2001.
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In order to do a statistical analysis of these data use the following link:
Last 24 hr. Raw wind data
Week raw wind data:
Month raw wind data
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 Pressure-slopes can be used to determine the overall pattern of winds within the Georgia Basin. Monitoring the changes to the Pressure-Slope direction will also help identify the pattern. It should be noted that when the Pressure- Slope steepness values are below .5mb (millibars) per 60nm (nautical miles) the winds will be more variable. This Link is from the Environment Canada Website. |
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 Air Quality ratings of 'Good', 'Fair', 'Poor', and 'Very Poor' Correspond to air Quality Ranges of 0-25, 26-50, 51-100 and greater than 100 respectively.
Forecasts are for outdoor locations and may not be valid for areas impacted by emissions from exceptional events such as wildfires or dust storms. Click on the southern Vancouver Island area for the forecasts from Royal Roads, the station closest to Race Rocks. This Link is from the Environment Canada Website. |
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 THE PERFECT STORM: On Dec 10, 2006, a particularly heavy storm hit Race Rocks. This file shows some of the extreme weather events measured that day.
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Storm Videos Dec 11, 2006
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| Hurricane Force Winds (158km) occurred on the night of December 15, 2006. This file shows the data related to that extreme event. |
.Also this event shows up well on the high wind speed graph above |
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| Abiotic effects of the wind at Race Rocks:
 An impressive aspect of the beauty of the West Coast of British Columbia is the ever changing seascape under the influence of the wind. In the summer months, from May through September, the wind blows up the Strait of Juan de Fuca from open Pacific Ocean 100km to the west. Rarely do we get easterly winds at that time. From October through April, we can have winds originating from either direction. Wind of course is what we see from the movement of air from a high pressure center to an area of low pressure. Pressure difference are ultimately caused by the warming of the earth and the atmosphere from the sun. So in effect we can say that wind as a form of energy is a derivative of solar energy.
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T he effect of wind on organisms in many different habitats on the islands is pronounced. Birds are impacted in their foraging, nesting and resting, Their behaviour often reflects an adaptation to wind. In November of each year we have a large overwintering population of Thayer's gulls. This video shows them oriented along the axis of the wind when it was blowing from the north-east at 30 Knots. Their activity was certainly curtailed that day as they held out against the storm. The marine mammals are also sensitive to wind direction. Typically there are many sealions hauled out on the North East corner of the island in September, but with the first blows from the Northeast, they often disperse to more protected locations. |
| Intertidal organisms are also affected. Macroalgae must have firmly attached holdfasts to resist the pounding waves, and the logs and other debris carried onshore by the wind. Goose Neck barnacles and californianus mussels also have their special strategies to hold on in this highly impacted zone. |
The full e nergy transfer process involving macroalgae is often made possible by winds tearing up the algae and depositing them in drifts on the shore. Here decomposition can contribute to a whole web of organisms. In this photo, the giant kelps, Nereocystis and Macrocystis as well as sea grasses have ended up on the shore of Race Rocks.The Macrocystis grows miles from this area and so this represents a transfer of energy from another ecosystem. Further, the early winds of autumn often send shreds of algae to the benthic community where they are food for sea urchins and other invertebrates, an important part of the energy flow in the community. |
 Some organisms like these Prasiola algae depend on the salt spray to keep them moistened as they are located above the high tide level. The distribution of lichen on the shore is often in direct relationship to the amount of salt spray from the wind that it receives. See this file for the effects of salinity as an abiotic factor. |
| Wind also is one of the components causing swell and surge. Often the wind that causes this, is far out in the Pacific, and may not be directly felt at the islands. However, the delayed effect of the resulting ground-swell surge, sometimes days after a storm in the Pacific, is an important factor in determining habitats and ecological niches of organisms. |
Heres a rather unusual way in which eagles interact with the wind. |
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This graph represents the wind speed over the past 24 hours from the Race Rocks weather station at 6 metres elevation. This graphical interpretation is made possible by the website victoriaweather.ca
1.Following from # 4 above...In the panel "Navigation Options" Choose Bulk Data, CSV. Then import that .csv file into a Spreadsheet. This is an example of a chart made in EXCEL.
This graph represents the wind speed over the past week from the Race Rocks weather station at 6 metres elevation( 2 metres above ground level). This graphical interpretation is made possible by the website victoriaweather.ca
This graph represents the wind speed over the past month from the Race Rocks weather station at 6 metres elevation. This graphical interpretation is made possible by the website victoriaweather.ca
For examples of correlation of wind speed and pressure. Go to this file where we keep records recorded in past months which may show this negative correlation .
An impressive aspect of the beauty of the West Coast of British Columbia is the ever changing seascape under the influence of the wind. In the summer months, from May through September, the wind blows up the Strait of Juan de Fuca from open Pacific Ocean 100km to the west. Rarely do we get easterly winds at that time. From October through April, we can have winds originating from either direction. Wind of course is what we see from the movement of air from a high pressure center to an area of low pressure. Pressure difference are ultimately caused by the warming of the earth and the atmosphere from the sun. So in effect we can say that wind as a form of energy is a derivative of solar energy. 
