Local Geography and Weather Data
Notes
Time
The Universal Time Coordinate (UTC) is approximately Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) (i.e. the time in London, England). The following is a conversion table between UTC, Eastern Standard Time, and Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) for climatological observation times. UTC is 5 hours behind EST.
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UTC
00 Z
06 Z
12 Z
18 Z
EDT
8 PM
2 AM
8 AM
2 PM
EST
7 PM
1 AM
7 AM
1 PM
Weather stations
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Sable Island, NS |
New England area |
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Weather stations consist of an array of instruments designed to collect a variety of meteorological parameters. Station WSA on Sable Island, NS is representative of a well equipped automated station(click on image).
The National Weather Service maintains official observing stations across the U.S. Click the map above for a map of stations in the northeast.
Stations are identified by a 4 letter station identifier. Because all American stations begin with a "K" (Canadian satations start with a "C"), only the last three letters of a station abbreviation are usually plotted. Search for full station name here by entering 3-letter station name.
Local Station Text Data
The closest National Weather Stations to Lyndonville are at the Fairbanks museum in St. Johnsbury (K1V4) and at the Mount Washington Airport at Littleton/Whitefield (KHIE). K1V4 is closer but has poor wind data because the tower is between two buildings. KHIE has more reliable data, including cloud reports. Here are links to hourly reports to these two stations from differnt websites. Note that you may display data from any station n North America by entering the station namei in the location bar at the top of your web browser.Maps of station data
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- All this data is plotted on a station model (see above). For now, we will focus attention only on temperature and winds. The temperature depicted above is 26 F. Clicking on the image above will bring you to a current data plot. Temperature is in degrees Fahrenheit.
- Those curious about all data plotted on maps may check out link to complete station model.
- Exercise A.1: Identify St. Johnsbury on the data plot above using the New England Area station map. Verify if the temperature is the same in the text data and on the map plot for that station. Be careful to match times indicated on the map and on the text data.
Temperature contours (isotherms) | 4-hr Animation |
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- Contour analyses help identify continuous features on maps. Temperature contours are called isotherms. These identify lines of constant temperature. The above image shows current isotherms.
- Animations illustrate how these features evolve in time.
Winds
Wind barbs point in the direction that the wind is coming from. So an upward barb points into a northerly wind coming from the north. The barb in the example above indicates a northwesterly wind (coming from northwest) blowing southeastward.
Ticks indicate windspeed in increments of 5 knots (about 5.6 mph). In the northern (southern) hemisphere, ticks are drawn to the right (left) of the wind barb.
- Exercise A.2: Using the same map and text data as in A.1, verify if wind directions match for map and text data.
Locating Lyndon State College
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Local map
Regional map
Station Map
The Local Map Lyndon State College lies in the Passumpsic valley with the Green Mountains of Vermont to the West and the White mountains of New Hampshire to the east.
Weather Station at LSC
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![LSC Weather Camera]](/webcam/LSCimage_thumb.jpg)