Held during the last full week of July, RAGBRAI is a seven day bike ride from west to east across Iowa. This year's event finished up this past weekend with most days being rather pleasant for biking and overnight camping. The featured chart presents two weather metrics during each year's ride using the Des Moines airport data as a representative proxy for statewide conditions. Of course a more rigorous weather analysis could be done using more route specific airport station data, but the chart hopefully is a close approximation. The top panel shows the number of hours each year with a heat index of at least 85°F. The bottom panel analyzes wind speed and direction, producing an averaged vector component wind in the east/west direction. For the bottom chart, red values would indicate a net average head wind. So the top panel shows the reduced number of hours with 85+°F heat index vs a long term simple average and even the past three years. The bottom panel as well shows a reduced head winds vs the previous three years.

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Tags:   ragbrai