Indianapolis, 13 August 2011: the wind readings hour by hour

Indianapolis International reported wind from 310 degrees at 33.3 mph with a gust to 48.3 mph at 8:54 PM on 13 August 2011. Eight minutes later the station logged a 50.8 mph gust.

The 8:54 PM reading

At 8:54 PM EDT, Indianapolis International Airport (USW00093819), 7.7 mi from the reference point, reported wind from 310° at 33.3 mph, gusting to 48.3 mph. Temperature was 80.1°F, dew point 63.0°F, humidity 56%. Visibility was 10.00 mi. The sky was overcast, present weather was thunderstorm, and sea level pressure was 1012.0 hPa. Precipitation on that reading was 0.00 in.

The next reading came eight minutes later. At 9:02 PM the station reported 310° at 31.1 mph with a gust of 50.8 mph, temperature 66.2°F, humidity 83%, and visibility down to 4.00 mi. At 9:10 PM the gust was 42.5 mph and visibility was 2.00 mi.

Every hour of that day

The station sent in 37 readings between midnight and midnight. Sustained wind across them ran from calm to 33.3 mph, and five readings came in calm. Gusts were reported on five readings: 21.9 mph at 1:54 PM, the same 21.9 mph on the 2:00 PM synoptic report, then 48.3 mph at 8:54 PM, 50.8 mph at 9:02 PM, and 42.5 mph at 9:10 PM. No other reading in the day carried a gust value.

Temperature ran from 64.4°F to 88.0°F. Between the 7:54 PM reading and the 9:10 PM reading it fell from 82.9°F to 64.4°F. Dew point ran from 57.0°F to 66.2°F, humidity from 40% to 94%, and sea level pressure, reported on 32 of the 37 readings, from 1009.0 hPa to 1013.1 hPa. Visibility ran from 2.00 mi to 10.00 mi.

Present weather was reported on 8 readings, all of them naming thunderstorm, three of them also naming showers and rain, two of them mist, and one heavy rain. The other 29 readings carried no present weather at all. Sky cover was overcast on 8 readings, partly cloudy on 13, mostly cloudy on 12, clear on 3 and mostly clear on 1.

Twenty three readings reported precipitation of 0.00 in, nine carried no precipitation value, and five reported an amount above zero: 0.09 in at 9:10 PM, 0.21 in at 9:28 PM, 0.25 in at 9:54 PM and 0.09 in at 10:54 PM, each a one hour accumulation, plus 0.35 in on the 11:00 PM three hour report. Those one hour figures overlap each other, so they are not a running total and do not add up to a storm total.

The table

NOAA hands these back in metric, so the numbers above are converted. Temperature and dew point come across in Celsius, wind speed and gust in metres per second, visibility in kilometres, precipitation in millimetres. Present weather is decoded from the METAR abbreviation on each reading the same way a Conditions.Site report decodes it: TS is thunderstorm, SH is showers, RA is rain, BR is mist.

Why this date

Wind questions in central Indiana usually come down to what the anemometer read at one particular minute, not to a daily summary. So the table carries wind speed, direction, gust, temperature, dew point, visibility, precipitation and sky for every reading the station sent, and you can go straight to whatever minute you need.

Before you use these numbers

These are the readings the station took, not the day's certified extremes. A real peak can happen between scheduled readings, so a published daily maximum may not match what you see here. That matters more than usual on this date: the fastest values are on special reports filed a few minutes apart, and the true peak may well have fallen between two of them.

GHCNh pools observations from more than one reporting network at the same physical station. On this date that gives you a routine report just before each hour and a synoptic report six minutes later on eight of the hours, 7:54 PM and 8:00 PM for instance. Both are shown. That is one station reporting twice, not two separate stations. The 8:43 PM, 9:02 PM, 9:10 PM, 9:28 PM and 11:31 PM entries are off cycle special reports from the same station.

Wind is measured at the station. It tells you what the anemometer at the airport saw, at the airport, at that moment, at the height that instrument sits.

And this is one station. A full report pulls the neighbouring stations for the same moment and prints each one on its own, with its distance and how far its reading sits from the time you asked about. The station search for this area also turned up Indianapolis Eagle Creek AP, Indianapolis Executive AP, Shelbyville Muni AP, Anderson Muni AP and Columbus Bakalar AP.

Where the numbers came from

Hourly, synoptic and special surface observations from NOAA NCEI, Global Historical Climatology Network hourly (GHCNh), station USW00093819. Pulled for the UTC days 2011-08-13 and 2011-08-14, then cut down to the local EDT day. Every reading shown carries a NOAA quality code that passes the same check Conditions.Site runs: source 223 with quality codes 1 and 4, and source 343 with quality codes 5, 9, P and U. No value in the local day was rejected by that check.