Wind Roses from airports around the world - Graphics or Raw Data Tables

The Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM) lets you examine long-term records of wind speed and direction for many locations around the world. For observing stations where wind speeds are measured, mostly at airports, users can access tabular data and / or generate wind rose plots.

Wind roses are graphical charts that characterize the speed and direction of winds measured at weather stations. Presented in a circular format, the length of each "spoke" around the circle indicates the amount of time that the wind blows from the indicated direction. Colors along the spokes indicate categories of wind speed. 

Where do these data come from?

• How-To

  Note: wind roses are only available for stations that measure wind (mostly at airports).

  To view prepared wind roses for a location:

  1. Start at https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/sites/locate.php.

  2. Click the Select by Network dropdown menu and choose a network of interest. Note that the alphabetical list of networks includes states, countries, and continents.

  3. Once you choose a network, click the Switch Network button.
  4. Use the second dropdown to Select a Station, or click any yellow dot on the map below.
  5. Once you've selected your station of interest, click the Select Station button.
  6. Click the *Wind Roses button at the top of the window.

  Prepared wind rose plots show winds for the whole year over the period of record plus a plot for every month of the year.

  To explore winds at specific times of day, click the *Custom Wind Roses button.

  Multiple controls give you the opportunity to explore winds at very specific times. Controls also let you find the average winds for a time period you specify over the period of record.

  • If you want to check on winds that occur at a certain time of day, you can limit observations to a specific hour.
  • You can also check winds during a specified part of the day, you can limit observations to a range of hours. For instance, Start time = 8:00 AM and End time =11:00 AM
  • Specify your time period of interest and click Submit.

  Note that this application attempts to generate a wind rose for the time period you specify. To minimize the amount of data that the application has to process for initial explorations, the default time period is very short and may not produce a graphic. If you set the request in a way that specifies a large amount of data, it can take up to a few minutes to generate the plot.
• Data Access
  Data Format(s)

  TXT (ASCII), CSV, PNG
• Related Datasets
  1961-1990 Wind Roses by Month - Charts

  For selected stations, you can access prepared wind roses that characterize winds from 1961-1990.
• Technical
  Data Type

  Land-based station

  Essential Climate Variables

  Wind speed and direction
• Additional Information

  The site states "The archive does contain errors and non representative data, so please use care when using these plots. In general, data from the airports is of good quality and representative of the local surrounding area."