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Lies, damned lies, and statistics

John pointed me to this interesting, and ultimately rather depressing web site today. Weymouth Weather.

Now I don’t know where this weather station is, but hopefully their anemoneter is hidden behind a wall somewhere in the middle of town, cause the data aint good.

I ran some numbers through for July over the last 4 years for 10am, 12pm and 2pm. I plotted it all and drew some pretty graphs. But the graphs couldn’t hide the awful truth.

Percentage of days in a given range:
0 - 5 kn 39%
5 - 10 kn 37%
10 - 15 kn 16%
15 - 20 kn 8%
20 - 25 kn 0%
25+ kn 0%

Weymouth average wind data for July

Average wind for 12pm = 7.7 knots. Average gust = 15 knots.

So for our 5 days of racing we’d likely have 2 days of sub-5 lowriding, 2 days of 5-10 marginal foiling, and 1 day of moderate wind foiling. I’m excited!

…

But then you look at gust data and the story gets a bit more interesting… we actually get days with > 25 knots of wind.

Weymouth gust data for July

Argh… it shows what happens when you don’t have a boat to tinker with!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Moth, Sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 Responses to “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”

  1. allthewaywithusa Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    I think foiling tacks will come into their own in these conditions. Go Bora!!

  2. Popeye Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    Oh crap, did you pack the heavy air main?

  3. Popeye Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    You’re missing about 20% of the wind in the first graph?

  4. Si Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    Dont worry mate, its been blowing dogs off leads on the south coast for weeks. We’ll probably get battered.

  5. scott Says:
    June 21st, 2008 at 6:11 am

    “You’re missing about 20% of the wind in the first graph?”

    Good point. Maybe I’m only choosing the data which supports my theory.

  6. scott Says:
    June 21st, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Fixed… I had missed all the days where it was exactly 5 knots, 10, 15 etc. Doesn’t make the picture any prettier unfortunately.

  7. Phil Says:
    June 21st, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    mmm, Below 5 kts, is it really to late to book now?

  8. Pommy Bob Says:
    June 22nd, 2008 at 7:00 pm

    Good English wind for a big English victory! Bora will need more than foiling tacks to win this one allthewaywithusa! Not long till a great english victory! I can already taste it!

  9. Les Says:
    June 23rd, 2008 at 10:39 am

    Sub 5kts. Maybe I should pack up Sector, with low-riding foils, and get over there?

    Surely the birth of my first child is THAT important an event that I need to be there……..

  10. scott Says:
    June 23rd, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Les, you’d better be there to make sure the newborn is indoctrinated into the world of mothing from the start.

    Have you got the kid a new baby-blue woollen jumper for those windy days yet?

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