How can I get hourly wind vector data?

Hello, I am trying to find a way to find data for hourly wind vector data over Lake Erie so I can implement it into my program that tracks bioaerosols over the lake. Currently what I have now in my code is wind vector data from last month but I want to be able to get data hourly so that every time I run the code I can see where the particles are traveling at that current time. Where can I find hourly wind vector data? and what code should i implement into the already existing code?? I really appreciate any help. Thank you in advance!!

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Probably the best source are the FAA Surface Weather Observation Stations (link). I’ve not done what you’re doing, but I know this information is freely available for every airport because I have current weather observations (ATIS reports) on my mobile phone for all the regional airports. I believe they’re updated hourly, and also more often if severe or rapidly-changing weather conditions (such as rapidly changing barometric pressure) require it. The FAA may help you with the appropriate protocols necessary to get this information.

Also see the NAV Canada Aviation Weather Website.

The MATLAB webwrite and other functions should be able to get this information for you.

[Kyan Sadeghilari]

Thank you so much! the first link really helps but how would i go about taking the information and putting it in matlab? I honestly have no clue on how to take the informationa and put it in matlab

for instance: how would i put this info into matlab

https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=KHZY&format=raw&hours=0&taf=off&layout=on&date=0

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure.

I don’t have any recent experience with this, although I did something similar many years ago with a much earlier version of MATLAB.

See the documentation on Web Access (link). It has a compendium of all the Internet-related functions, including web page and FTP functions, and links to tutorials and examples on using the functions.

This downloads all the HTML content on that webpage:

Wx = webread('https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=KHZY&format=raw&hours=0&taf=off&layout=on&date=0')

You want more useful data, so you will need to experiment with it.