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Weather Methodology

Updated 2020.03.01

Home > Killeen Weather > Methodology

 

Disclaimer

This is not a SCIENTIFIC weather survey.

To be clear, it is scientific in a few ways. (1) I keep these records out of curiosity, not to prove a point or fool anyone. (2) I attempt to be as accurate and consistent as possible. (3) I double-check all my math. However, I recognize that consumer-level thermometers and rain gauges are inconsistent at best (for example, when I bought a new rain gauge, I kept the old one; they have never once agreed with each other on the amount of rainfall — though they are close sometimes.) If I had the money and time, I would have five or seven thermometers at different locations on my property; I would discard the outliers each day and average the rest. But instead I only have one thermometer.

Also, these numbers aren’t “official”.

My results aren't intended to contradict any numbers you see on local news broadcasts or any weather websites — both temperature and rainfall vary noticeably, even within the same city; all the numbers on these pages are from my house.

 

Sources

The vast majority of all temperatures on these weather pages are from my own thermometer and the rainfall totals are from my own rain gauge(s), at my own house, recorded in South Central Killeen. A very few numbers are amalgamations from other sources — which I use if I’m on vacation or otherwise unable to check my own instruments. This is especially true of 2010-12, before I began seriously keeping my own records.

I have used the following sources in those instances (and I usually average them together and take into account how much they typically differ from my own gauges).

On my Daily Temperature Records page, I use superscript notations for all daily records that occurred before I began keeping track. See note at bottom of that page for corresponding sources.

 

Units

On all my weather pages, temperatures are presented in degrees Fahrenheit (°F) and precipitation is in inches (”).

 

Abbreviations

I use as few abbreviations as possible, for clarity’s sake. The few I use include the following:

I came up with “HLA” as a way to compare temperatures from day to day, as well as month-to-month or year-to-year. I noticed that frequently two days would have the same high, but different lows (or vice versa). If one day’s range was 70-100°F and the next day’s range was 80-100°F, everything else being equal, clearly the second day was warmer. I use HLA to show the difference (85.0 versus 90.0 in the previous example). Since I note the HLA of every day, I can then average the HLAs for the month (and year) and thus keep track of variations over time. I recognize that other climate/weather studies use different methods, and also that it would be even more accurate to to record and average the temperature every hour or even every minute, but I don’t have the ability (or time) for that. The HLA method is my best compromise between complete accuracy and ease of use.

 

Color Coding

I use colored text for various indications on my weather chart pages, which I hope is self-explanatory, but just in case... Blue text indicates “cooler” and red text indicates “warmer” (except for precipitation, where green indicates more rain and red indicates less rain). In any particular chart, I use bold text on a black background in addition to the color to indicate superlatives (coolest, warmest, wettest, etc.) Over time, I have changed the way I use these colors, with the intention of making the information more clear.

Below is a screenshot of part of September 2015, with annotations in yellow, explaining briefly what each part means.

Click image to see full-size. This how my pages look as of 2020, after a major renovation of all older pages.

 

Precipitation

In all cases, precipitation was measured just after the rain. This is because in the past, I’ve watched half an inch of water completely evaporate from my rain gauge, so I’ve made sure to measure and record the amount as soon as the rain quits falling.

I’ve been told that some weather-watchers are instructed to check the rain gauge once a day, at predetermined times, such as 7 a.m. If I did this, my rainfall totals would be almost zero for some months — and they’re already lower than official totals in most cases.

 

Record high / Record low

Daily “record high” (or record low) notations on yearly pages continue to exist even after they’ve been superseded. Check the Daily Records page for the latest records for all 366 days. I compiled that page using all available sources, including wunderground.com, weather.com, and Foreca (a weather app on Windows 10), and then overrode those records, when applicable, with my local numbers from 2010-19.

Unfortunately, the National Weather Service does not make its daily high/low records available, though I contacted the organization on multiple occasions (with no reply). I also contacted local TV stations, asking whether their records were available for perusal; none responded. (Update: in late 2019, one TV station weatherperson responded to me via Twitter, saying he is unaware of any official records for Killeen.)

So... none of the “records” on my pages are “official”, but I’ve done the best I can with available information. A few of them, I suspect are not accurate (because they seem oddly warm or cool for their particular days), but I have no way of double-checking them.

 

Location

Please note, for historical purposes, that my house’s location (31.047440, -97.722606) was not included within the city limits of Killeen until [date unknown]. When the city was smaller, this location was south of the city limits.

 

Reason For Interest

I’ve been interested in weather since childhood (1970s) when I noted that some winters had snow and others didn’t, and some summers were hot and dry while others were warm and wet. I began noticing patterns and wanted to make sure my observations weren’t subjective. One pattern I noticed since moving to Central Texas was the tendency to have a record-breaking hot year followed by two or more years of gradual cooling, and then another record-breaking hot year. Such a pattern gives the impression to residents that the climate overall is cooling, interrupted occasionally by very hot years, when in fact the opposite might be occurring — each very hot year is hotter than the last, interrupted by the deceiving cooling years. The only way to be sure was to start keeping track, daily.

I did not want to start keeping track daily. What I would have much preferred is for other weather stations to make their historical data available online, but most don’t. Wunderground makes it available, but there are missing days and days when their numbers are clearly inaccurate (one day showed 1300 inches of rain, for example, while another day showed the high as 81°F when the entire area was known to have been above 100°F). Plus, they don’t go back very far. Local TV stations, newspapers, government weather stations, etc. — none of them (that I’ve yet found) make available historical daily weather information.

For example, several sites will say the average annual precipitation for Killeen is about 33 inches, but none of them list rainfall totals per year. And the “average” hasn’t gone down, despite many consecutive years of below-average rainfall.

 

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