Mean Temperatures and Seasonality
The decade of the 1990's consisted of 3652 days.
With min & max data for 233 stations this amounts to 1,701,832 potential temperatures.
In reality, 1,469,092 temperatures were reported (86.32%).
The average number of stations reporting each day was 201.1 (range 181 to 216).
The state-wide means for minimum and maximum temperature are shown below.
For better seasonal treatment, the frost-free period (May through September) is treated as summer.
The 4 months before May are treated as spring and the 3 months after September are treated as autumn.
As the first modeling step, the daily state-wide means for both min and max air temperature were obtained
and used to demean the non-missing raw observations.
27 AUG 2001, updated on 31 OCT 2001
dlg@rapid.msu.montana.edu