Tuesday 18 April 2017

Climate Data 2016

This Blog post is a bit later than normal, but it took us a bit of time to get all the units collected and then took me more time to get them all downloaded and the information compiled. Better late then never!

2016 marks the end of our 5 year climate study and as in 2015 a few experienced some problems downloading.  Out of the 38 units we installed, 13 experienced some type of problem and we could not get any data from them. Unfortunately many of the damaged units came from the Fauquier/Needles region so no data for this region was available for 2016.


Looking at our frost free days, we do see an increase again this year. In many locations, there had not been a fall frost occurrence until well into November.

For our purposes we used “slight” frost as our parameter, using 0°C for our last spring frost and -2°C for our first fall frost.  

Frost Free Days (FFD)
Region
2014
2015
2016
Nakusp
191
192
195
Arrow Park
175
192
201
Burton
177
187
210
Needles/Fauquier
171
182
*Data from this area was corrupt and FFD were not available.



We expected that our 2015 was a warmer year, and for the most part it was.  We had more FFD and most areas showed an increase in GDD. 

Growing Degree Days (GDD) is a measure of heat accumulation used to predict plant development rates such as the date that a crop will reach maturity. GDD is calculated by taking the average of the daily maximum and minimum temperatures minus a base temperature, (in our case 10 °C).  The yearly GDD is cumulative throughout the growing season (April 1 to October 31).

Growing Degree Days (GDD)

Region
2014
2015
2016
Nakusp
1033
1011
1062
Arrow Park
997
1057
1020
Burton
1077
1116
1082
Needles/Fauquier
1060
1099
Data from this area was corrupt and GDD were not available.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, thank you so much for collecting and posting this valuable data that everyone can now see and use. FFDs there do look impressive compared to most of Canada and do look similar to that of other warm low elevation valleys of the far Southern Interior of BC, I think.
    So I saw records showing that Fauquier may be relatively cloudy -almost as cloudy on average as Salmon Arm and even cloudier than the Okanagan or Castlegar with their "valley cloud." Do you personally notice that to be true? I wonder if it is sunnier up on the W side of the Arrow Lake towards Whatshan L...? Thanks again. I wish you and the grapevines well,
    Danny
    South Okanagan

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