wxteam4's Blog

Another small research project just completed. This one, we focused on the years of 1950 thru 2007 and we looked at the precipitation for the months of January thru May and compared that to the temperatures of June thru August. Our thinking was that if we had a wet January thru May, then we would have a cool June thru August and just the opposite if it was a dry January thru May. Ideally we would have been able to do this for the whole Kansas City area, but the only data available that goes back that far is from KCI. So all of the following results are specific to KCI.

 

First we needed to know what the climatological averages were for precip and temp. For precipitation at KCI: January 1.15in.; February 1.31in.; March 2.44in.; April 3.88in.; May 5.39in. That makes the average precipitation for January thru May 14.17in. For temperature at KCI: June 83.9ºF; July 88.8ºF; August 87.1ºF. Therefore the average June thru August temperature 86.6ºF.

 

After sitting down to look at the compiled data, we noticed how messy it was and how erratic and random everything seemed. It turned out that 7 years had a wet January thru May followed by cooler June thru August. 19 years had a dry January thru May followed by a warmer June thru August. So out of the 58 years that we looked at 26 of those years were right with our hypothesis. But 19 separate years did not line up with out hypothesis. Either a dry January thru May led to a cooler June thru August or a wet January thru May led to a warmer June thru August. The remaining years contained either normal precipitation or normal temperatures and therefore could not be counted as either with our hypothesis or not with our hypothesis. So it seems that our hypothesis, at least for KCI has failed. However, a problem lies in the fact that KCI’s precipitation does not accurately represent the precipitation of the entire metro area where the temperature does. It can be said that the high from day to day at KCI is more or less the high for the whole KC area, give or take a degree or two. But the amount of precipitation, either in the form of rain or snowfall, varies significantly over the area. KCI may get hammered with 8 inches of snow where downtown only get 4 inches and Olathe get 1 inch. So, as you can see, a problem lies in the precipitation fields of our data. We could correct that, to some degree, if we had precipitation data points for multiple areas around the Kansas City area. So while our hypothesis has failed with KCI data, it is possible that it would pass if we could somehow look at the precipitation for the area as a whole.

 

On a side note, while I had the data in front of me, I decided to take a look at the number of wet and dry first five months as well as the number of warm and cool summers. In the 58 years we have been looking at, 20 of them had wetter than average January thru May and 36 of them had drier January thru May. Something of notice, in the years 1968 thru 1989, KCI experienced several years of dry spells followed by a set of years that were wetter than average. And it would alternate back and forth between dry and wet; dry then wet, dry then wet, then dry again. Overall, it seems that KCI is more often drier than average than it is wet. Now looking at temperatures in June thru August, 20 years were cooler than average at KCI and 27 were warmer. So KCI is more often warmer than the average. There were several consecutive years where summers were either warmer or cooler than average. 1952 thru 1957, and 2002 thru 2007 (exception of 2004) were two sets of years where a noticeable streak of warmer summers occurred. And 1992 thru 1998 (exception of 1994) saw a streak of years with cooler than average summers.

 

By the way…R-Dub, I’m working on your idea next.

Chris