The Buffalo Seven

Well, here I am, near the end of one of the most beautiful Novembers that has ever happened here in Winnipeg, and I’m slogging away at wind chill statistics.  I’m glad for it though; I’ve been working on this project for a while and it continues to grow and gain momentum.  It’s sounding more and more like our findings so far will be presented at a national conference, which is exciting.  It will likely be published later too.  However, there is still plenty of work to do.

Married life is great.  I probably have the best wife in the world.  We’re super busy with lots of things: getting used to being married and figuring all that out, managing our work schedules and getting involved in several communities.  Being married is great and if we can keep up how things have been so far, we’re going to have a great life together.

We’ve both celebrated birthdays lately, and our bible study group threw us a surprise little wedding shower.  It’s been absolutely fantastic to see the communities we’re a part of show that we’re a part of them and that they care.  After feeling, in ways, that I and we have been very alone in Winnipeg, our friends have done a fantastic job lately at making us feel more included and a part of things.  Thank you guys.

I’m also working with a fellow member of saint benedict’s table on developing a new event for the community that involves movies.  That shows some promise to and could be a lot of fun.

Does anyone know how I can write a simple Cocoa application for OS X that generates a window that will display a progress bar and run some perl scripts?

Apparently more than just a couple people view my blog, a surprise to me.  Did you know that you can comment on any post I make?  At the bottom of each post is a line that tells you how many comments and/or reactions currently exist.  If you click on that, you will be taken to a new page that you can leave comments on.  I’ve made it easier than ever for you to do that, too.  You can now log in with a registered Disqus account, an OpenID, a Twitter account, or even your Facebook account.  So if you see something you like or have an opinion, don’t be afraid to leave it!

The climatology of wind chill in the PNR is investigated in order to improve the effectiveness of the wind chill warning bulletin.  We compiled event and bulletin statistics for 366 sites utilizing several differing sets of warning criteria, including a new proposal to eliminate all but the minimum equivalent temperature requirement.

Under current criteria, the PNR experiences an average of 736 events per year with a mean duration of 7.4 hours and standard deviation of 2.2 hours.  Data variability is large, with 12% of sites having never logged a single event while numerous Arctic sites see an average of 15 events per year.  Increasing the minimum required wind speed to 20 km/h yielded a 38% reduction in yearly events, while independently increasing the minimum time duration to 6 hours yielded a 46% reduction; the elimination of both requirements entirely dramatically increased the event count by 334%.

Individual site data were then collated into regions and a simple 24-hour forecast and reassessment cycle was used to estimate the production of new bulletins.  Bulletin statistics specific to Alberta nad the southern Prairies showed a similar result.  Under current criteria, 44 original WWCN bulletins must be issued for 187 regions on average each year.  The increase to 20 km/h showed a reduction to 31 bulletins (~30%) and 108 regions (~42%), while the increase to 6 hours gave a reduction to 33 bulletins (~25%) and 130 regions (~30%).  The elimination of wind and duration again showed a large increase to 95 bulletins (+116%) and 487 regions (+160%).  However, objectively selecting the best particular set of criteria still proved difficult; wind speed is the limiting factor, as a minimum of 70% of the variance of any wind chill calculation was found to result form a calculated 2 knot standard deviation in the wind speed.  The wind chill parameter itself can thus only be determined to within 2 equivalent degrees over a 95% confidence interval.

We conclude that while any increase in minimum wind speed and duration produces a reduction in both events and warning bulletins, a more subjective analysis still needs to be investigated to find a better balance between forecaster workload and value to the general public.

A short summary of the work that Jason and I have done so far on wind chill in the PNR region.  To be presented at this year’s change of season workshop.