Author: Tod Newman

  • Tucson Weather Charts – 6/26/19

    Nothing interesting this week. Rain predictor is still saying zero percent chance. Very little surprise there.

    Summer pattern is upon us.
  • Now this Rain Probability Chart looks More Believable!

    See below for the weeks data and a more believable probability chart. Not sure what happened with yesterdays (It might still rain today as predicted, but I doubt it), but I’m working on it.

  • New Feature – Neural Network-based Rain Predictor!

    One of my motivators for collecting this data is to figure out how to make predictions using it. I have been running a neural network predictor using this data for a while now with the intent that I could publish rain probability in the future. I have it about ready to show an example. Picking today because the model has made a surprising rain prediction that I don’t understand. (posted on 6/18 at 4PM…)

    See graph below to see some of the prediction results. Probability of Rain is predicted for the times referenced.

    More on how to design this machine learning workflow.

  • Tucson Weather – 6/18/2019

    Tucson has steadied into its early summer weather pattern. You can see this in the monthly plot below. Lower humidity and (of course!) higher temperatures dominate.

    Don’t mind the glitch in the middle, my Raspberry Pi is getting tired and sometimes konks out on me when I go on travel!

  • Tucson weather – Windy days! 11/15/2018

    Over the last 2 days (11/13-14) we had quite a bit of wind in Tucson.  These are probably the same winds that plagued California and spread wildfires over the weekend.  The winds drove the humidity way down and the temperature followed.  Note the large pressure spike (it went just off the scale on Monday).  This gradient must have drug the winds along with it, I suppose.

    I’m curious about the luminosity spike (both visual and IR) yesterday, because it wasn’t noticeably brighter than the previous few days.  Will be watching to see if this is a trend.  One hypothesis is that the wind knocked down some leaves from the mulberry tree that protects my porch (and therefore, the weather data collection rig).

    lightning_sensor_data_plot-week

  • Tucson Weather – Monsoon is behind us, Good Weather ahead! 11/12/18

    Here’s an interesting view at the last month.  Traditionally, Tucsonans know that Tucson weather changes quickly in the fall from summer to winter.  This change is always welcomed, but it also means that Thanksgiving always sneaks up on us.

    The plot below shows the drama of this changeover in the last month from higher temperatures to lower.  Plus, you can see the timeperiod in the middle where the change seems to have been put into motion by a storm event (see the lightning spikes in blue).   After those 6 days of cloudy and stormy weather, we have slipped into a pretty predictable pattern with no clouds and gradually decreasing temperatures.  Looks like something must be happening today with the high pressure and lower temperatures, though.

    lightning_sensor_data_plot-month

  • Tucson Monsoon Weather – 10/25/18

    We’ve been getting a lot of rain lately in Tucson.  Not sure if it’s a late Monsoon or early winter rains (or hurricane rain).  Two days ago we had rain nearly all day.  You can see all the lightning strikes in the plot below.  As normal, at the scale I use, the intersection of the humidity and temperature lines signify rain and the “pointy” luminescence fills signify cloud coverage.

    lightning_sensor_data_plot-week

  • Tucson post-Monsoon weather – October is here! – 8/11/18

    October is the month that Tucsonans live for, because it is when we finally see hope that our wonderful winter weather is coming.  In the one month chart here you can see the hot, consistent pattern of September get interrupted (in this case by the remnants of a hurricane).  This must have been the trigger, because the patterns got all confused and the result is our nice, low morning temperatures.  Humidity is still swinging wildly, but the highs are lower every day (along with the temperature.  The luminescence sensors are also telling a story of cloud cover (see the jagged peaks and compare to the smooth hills of September).

    lightning_sensor_data_plot-month

  • Tucson Monsoon Weather – Hurricane rain pattern – 10-5-18

    You can look at the timeframe from 10/1 to 10/3 to see how the remnants of a late season hurricane passing through the desert can disrupt a stable non-monsoon weather pattern.

    From about 9/27 to 10/1, we see the typical non-monsoon cycle recover after the 9/19 monsoon event.  The hurricane event on 10/1 throws this pattern into disarray and it still hasn’t recovered.  Note the difference in the luminosity data, temperature, and pressure.

    lightning_sensor_data_plot-month

  • Tucson Monsoon Weather – drying up and Cooling Down – 9/23/2018

    Looking at the last month of data, we could be seeing a trend towards drying up and cooling down.  The length of the days  is getting shorter and the light is less intense (see the Light spectrum ‘bumps’).  Also, the temperature swing is smaller through the day.  The pressure went up quickly after the last rain event and now is tapering off.  We’d expect higher temperatures for the last couple of days but didn’t see that.  The daily lows seems to be a bit lower each day.  Barring unforeseen weather events, I think we’ll start seeing the range between the highs and lows get smaller each day.

    lightning_sensor_data_plot-month