Ok, so everyone talks about how summers in the past were better and how this summer is rubbish.. especially me it seems

Being a bit more scientific

Could we get a windsurfer's view of what a good summer looks like and then get a kind meteorologist to run the stats? Apparently the BOM answer questions if you write to them

I was thinking...

Define a good day as SW-SE wind that does not drop below 17 knots between the hours of 5pm and 7pm.

Define a very good day as SW-SE wind that does not drop below 22 knots between the hours of 5pm and 7pm.

Then look at the number of good and very good days between October 1st and 31st Jan (assume the end of seabreeze season) over the last x years (as many as we can), then try to work out what the good years had in common...

Or has windjunky done this all already?

GP,

Don't have time to do the sums, but had a good chat with an ecologist/enviro scientist yesterday & he commented that a 'model' generated by some boffins on the predicted climate change will give us an additional 17% stronger winds by 2050!

Hope w/surfers have wheelchair attachments by then...don't think my body can hold out that long!

The BOM are pretty good about providing data when you request it, as long as you are upfront about why you are after it.

Does any of the data from this page help?

www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/

After some digging you can end up finding data like this:

www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_066037.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/200910/html/IDCJDW2125.200910.shtml (can be downloaded as a spreadsheet, looks like you need to request older data though)

Select to expand quote

Sailhack said...

GP,

Don't have time to do the sums, but had a good chat with an ecologist/enviro scientist yesterday & he commented that a 'model' generated by some boffins on the predicted climate change will give us an additional 17% stronger winds by 2050!

Hope w/surfers have wheelchair attachments by then...don't think my body can hold out that long!

Hmm... I'll be 94 by then. Don't know about a wheelchair attachment, but perhaps a Zimmer frame attachment would work - wouldn't need footstraps, either. I wonder if there's a patent on that yet?

Select to expand quote

ozbiker56 said...

Sailhack said...

GP,

Don't have time to do the sums, but had a good chat with an ecologist/enviro scientist yesterday & he commented that a 'model' generated by some boffins on the predicted climate change will give us an additional 17% stronger winds by 2050!

Hope w/surfers have wheelchair attachments by then...don't think my body can hold out that long!

Hmm... I'll be 94 by then. Don't know about a wheelchair attachment, but perhaps a Zimmer frame attachment would work - wouldn't need footstraps, either. I wonder if there's a patent on that yet?

Zimmer.... don't they do sails too?

Select to expand quote

GalahOnTheBay said...

The BOM are pretty good about providing data when you request it, as long as you are upfront about why you are after it.

Does any of the data from this page help?

www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/

After some digging you can end up finding data like this:

www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_066037.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/200910/html/IDCJDW2125.200910.shtml (can be downloaded as a spreadsheet, looks like you need to request older data though)

data looks good but it's only rudimentary in terms of windsurfing...

even the detailed stuff will only tell you three things (how strong at 9am, how strong at 3pm and the biggest gust). Given how crazy the average watkins graph looks during the average day, this doesn't really give you the full "would windsurfing have been good" picture?

I'm going to draft a letter and see how I get on. I'll post it here first so people can error check it.