[AZ-Observing] Re: Weather in AZ
- From: "Bernie Sanden" <bsanden@xxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:04:55 -0700
OK, since Tom alluded to it in this thread, I've just finished uploading
onto my PBase site a few charts based upon my original analysis of Brian
Skiff's Flagstaff cloudiness data. I used Brian's nightly data from
January 1980 thru June 2004 and for these purposes the general
conclusions should be more-or-less consistent with Phoenix, Prescott,
Grand Canyon, etc.
The punchline is that there are small differences in cloudiness by day
(night) of week, but obviously nothing statistically significant...the
data for all the nights are well within two sigma of the mean. When I
showed the charts at the astro club meetings back around 1996, I only
had 17 years of data or so. Back then, Wednesday won out. Well, with
24.5 years of data crunched, Wednesday still reigns as the best night
overall. Again, there's nothing statistically different about Wed or
any other night, but useful in bar bets. Of course, if you're betting
about this kind of stuff in a bar, you have bigger problems than clouds
ruining your observing weekend.
I also uploaded to the site a pie chart breakdown by sky condition
[photometric (clear), partial, spectroscopic, and cloudy]. Check
Brian's site for an explanation of each. It's been over three years
since I've been able to get back to entering and re-analyzing Brian's
data, but I'm about due. It would be rather easy to check if for the
last year we've had abnormal cloudiness for Fri and Sat nights. I'm not
doing it tonight though.
The charts are at the following link:
http://www.pbase.com/bsanden/flagstaff_cloudiness
Now go win some bets,
Bernie
-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Polakis
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 10:53 AM
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Weather in AZ
While my data reduction only uses the monthly summaries, Brian's data in
its raw form does indeed include the dates all the way back to 1980.
One could use it to figure out what the New Moon or weekend cloudiness
looks like.
Bernie Sanden did exactly that quite a few years back, using Brian's
actual calendar pages and meticulously entering the days of the week in
a spreadsheet. If I recall correctly, he facetiously presented that
Wednesday nights or something were the clearest. Of course they were
the clearest within hundredths of a percent, but by exaggerating the
scale on the plot, he came up with something that was worthy of a
pointless USA Today chart: "Numbers Show That We're Observing Less!"
I think he also analyzed the "Full Moon clearing" phenomenon.
Tom
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