Source: NC CLIMATE OFFICE, 7/20/20
They're the sort of climatological curiosities that may have crossed your mind this year without even realizing it.
In the Sandhills: Wow, 90 degrees before March is done? Here comes the sun!
In the Foothills: A freeze in mid-May? No way!
And in eastern North Carolina last month: Four inches of rain in one day? Don't float away!
If recent weather has left you wondering about the rarity of such events, or if you're planning ahead for what sort of conditions you might expect at a different time of year, our relaunched and refreshed Climate Thresholds tool can provide the answers.
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The new version of the tool was the work of Mike Rehnberg, an undergraduate intern at the State Climate Office for two years before graduating from NC State University in May. He will begin his graduate studies this fall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researching cyclone dynamics.
"What surprised me most was the breadth of information we were able to draw from a single set of raw data just by refining the way we organized that data," said Mike.
To convert that raw data -- historical observations from weather stations across the state -- into actionable answers to those climate questions, Mike organized the tool to use a simple three-step process: Select a Threshold, Find a Station, and Explore Data.
After choosing a threshold of interest -- such as days with high temperatures of 90°F or greater -- and selecting a weather station with that data available, the results in the final step are presented as key statistics and interactive, exportable charts and tables showing the year-by-year occurrence of days meeting your threshold.
"To me, the biggest application that came out of the tool is its ability to take simple figures and plot their change over time," Mike said of the charts, which include the number of days per year and the annual first and last days meeting the user-specified threshold at a given station.
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