Wind, wind, and wind...

I would like to start this Valentine week with a post which I haven't done for long days.
Everyone feels all different speeds and directions of winds. Since it is everywhere we often consider it as less important component of our life. And I have thought about the wind as same way, not so important in oceanographic world. However, many oceanographers have nowadays acknowledged winds as a source of  physical mixing.
One of the most known characteristics of estuary is the place where seawater meet freshwater. Since the physical intensity of two water masses are so strong that I ignored winds as a third physical factor. However, I have read some papers and found that wind can alter the structure of estuarine water system by blowing from different directions and speeds. That's why I have tried to plot wind of Chesapeake Bay.

Wind plots in Annapolis MD in 2010

The beauty of wind data is firstly the number. Most of wind data are collected every six or sixty minutes. So, there very large numbers of data freely available for anyone. On the other hand, wind directions and speeds are too vary for short times, it is hard to interpret data out of plots as you can see. So, there is another way to plot wind with the same data above.

Wind Rose plot in Annapolis MD in January 2010

Wind Rose plot is more informative because it is showing cumulative directions and speeds of wind. In the figure, the result is the average of wind data for January. But this figure seems to be inappropriate if I want to see the short term event.
So, in conclusion, wind data is good because it is readily accessible and useful for everyone but it is hard to interpret. Therefore, we first know what we want to know from wind and a clever way to extract necessary data out of thousands data.