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Best practices for camera/weather data analysis

BeauWPS

BeauWPS

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 25, 2019
Messages
217
Location
Arkansas
I’ve got lots of data from last year’s cameras in a spreadsheet. Accompanying this is meteorological data I’ve compiled from Weather Underground and other solunar sources . I’ve got sunrise/sunset, moon phases, illumination, length of daylight, etc. Pretty much any information that gets disputed and debated in hunting circles.

The wind data is by the hour and a pain to gather in Weather Underground because it requires examining each day individually. Not an easy feat to map out 90+ days of wind data when you must click on each day individually and copy data.

Any suggestions for easy sources to mass export/copy wind data? Other data as well? Prevailing wind for the day would be good enough. Do you have preferences in data, data sources, methods of evaluating, suggestions or nightmares?
 
BeauWPS said:
I’ve got lots of data from last year’s cameras in a spreadsheet. Accompanying this is meteorological data I’ve compiled from Weather Underground and other solunar sources . I’ve got sunrise/sunset, moon phases, illumination, length of daylight, etc. Pretty much any information that gets disputed and debated in hunting circles.

The wind data is by the hour and a pain to gather in Weather Underground because it requires examining each day individually. Not an easy feat to map out 90+ days of wind data when you must click on each day individually and copy data.

Any suggestions for easy sources to mass export/copy wind data? Other data as well? Prevailing wind for the day would be good enough. Do you have preferences in data, data sources, methods of evaluating, suggestions or nightmares?
Click to expand...
Nothing specific I have used to cross reference data, but some resources might be The National Weather Service, NOAA, and Windfinder. My guess is sites like Weather Underground pull data from national public agencies like NOAA, etc.
 
fd8b64cbaad705c9b883cdd4732ea0e1.jpg

How I set my tracking sheet up. Time tracking is sunrise, sunset, moon rise, moon set, moon overhead and moon underfoot. Times marked in green are pics within 1.5 hours of the time. Temps that are marked indicated a 5 or more temp drop or a 10+ degree temp drop from the previous day. I track moon phase in plus or minus 4 days of new or full moon. Buck/Doe column is marked yellow for shooting hours pics. I use the weather tracking ground for the weather data.

It would be easier to do this with cell cams where you could stay on top of tracking. I don’t have cell cams though and let cams soak all season so this takes a while to pull this together.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
BTaylor said:
fd8b64cbaad705c9b883cdd4732ea0e1.jpg

How I set my tracking sheet up. Time tracking is sunrise, sunset, moon rise, moon set, moon overhead and moon underfoot. Times marked in green are pics within 1.5 hours of the time. Temps that are marked indicated a 5 or more temp drop or a 10+ degree temp drop from the previous day. I track moon phase in plus or minus 4 days of new or full moon. Buck/Doe column is marked yellow for shooting hours pics. I use the weather tracking ground for the weather data.

It would be easier to do this with cell cams where you could stay on top of tracking. I don’t have cell cams though and let cams soak all season so this takes a while to pull this together.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Nice! I have a combination of traditional and cell cams. It does take a fair amount of time for me to compile my data too.
 
BTaylor said:
fd8b64cbaad705c9b883cdd4732ea0e1.jpg

How I set my tracking sheet up. Time tracking is sunrise, sunset, moon rise, moon set, moon overhead and moon underfoot. Times marked in green are pics within 1.5 hours of the time. Temps that are marked indicated a 5 or more temp drop or a 10+ degree temp drop from the previous day. I track moon phase in plus or minus 4 days of new or full moon. Buck/Doe column is marked yellow for shooting hours pics. I use the weather tracking ground for the weather data.

It would be easier to do this with cell cams where you could stay on top of tracking. I don’t have cell cams though and let cams soak all season so this takes a while to pull this together.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Are you utilizing formulas and conditional formatting to speed things up such as color coding cells and flagging cells within your set parameters?
 
Related note I have tried fairly hard to get Claude to auto populate a spreadsheet based on a folder of trail cam pics with no success. Maybe one of these AIs can do that but I haven’t found it.
 
BeauWPS said:
I’ve got lots of data from last year’s cameras in a spreadsheet. Accompanying this is meteorological data I’ve compiled from Weather Underground and other solunar sources . I’ve got sunrise/sunset, moon phases, illumination, length of daylight, etc. Pretty much any information that gets disputed and debated in hunting circles.

The wind data is by the hour and a pain to gather in Weather Underground because it requires examining each day individually. Not an easy feat to map out 90+ days of wind data when you must click on each day individually and copy data.

Any suggestions for easy sources to mass export/copy wind data? Other data as well? Prevailing wind for the day would be good enough. Do you have preferences in data, data sources, methods of evaluating, suggestions or nightmares?
Click to expand...

I have downloaded archived weather data before. It was over a decade though. I believe it was either from Weather Underground or NOAA. I would use the Weather Underground website on a 'puter and not the app for this. Both organization have a Help Line.

If you tried to do a basic statistical analysis on this, there will be many nonlinearities and collinearities between independent variables. It would basically be almost a PhD-level project. I would instead graph out your data and look for trends. This would include also graphing independent variables against each other, etc. The human eye and mind is relatively good at picking apart these patterns, so long as you ponder it and don't try to squint your eyes to support what you'd like to be true or think will be true. Once you remove that too much, then numeric outputs can "lie" heavily, if not done correctly.
 
Last edited:
raisins said:
I have downloaded archived weather data before. It was over a decade though. I believe it was either from Weather Underground or NOAA. I would use the Weather Underground website on a 'puter and not the app for this. Both organization have a Help Line.

If you tried to do a basic statistical analysis on this, there will be many nonlinearities and collinearities between independent variables. It would basically be almost a PhD-level project. I would instead graph out your data and look for trends. This would include also graphing independent variables against each other, etc. The human eye and mind is relatively good at picking apart these patterns, so long as you ponder it and don't try to squint your eyes to support what you'd like to be true or think will be true. Once you remove that too much, then numeric outputs can "lie" heavily, if not done correctly.
Click to expand...
Sir…you throw around terms like PhD. I’ll have you know I’m very familiar with a post hole digger.

On a serious note, I’m looking for basic trends. I’m not into paralysis by analysis, but I think it’s worth examining even if that results in no correlation.

One of my pet peeves is during a game ESPN throws out “In May on days that end in Y, Juan Soto has a .458 batting average against right-handed pitchers when the ambient temperature is between 72-76F with a dew point of 56% or less.” C’mon ESPN…

The wind data to me is a valuable criteria and one that I struggle to find easy-to-export data.

I’ve heard MSU Deer Lab proclaim with nearly a million data points there is no correlation with the moon and buck activity. I would say that’s hard to argue against, but curiosity still gets the better of me.
 
BeauWPS said:
Sir…you throw around terms like PhD. I’ll have you know I’m very familiar with a post hole digger.

On a serious note, I’m looking for basic trends. I’m not into paralysis by analysis, but I think it’s worth examining even if that results in no correlation.

One of my pet peeves is during a game ESPN throws out “In May on days that end in Y, Juan Soto has a .458 batting average against right-handed pitchers when the ambient temperature is between 72-76F with a dew point of 56% or less.” C’mon ESPN…

The wind data to me is a valuable criteria and one that I struggle to find easy-to-export data.

I’ve heard MSU Deer Lab proclaim with nearly a million data points there is no correlation with the moon and buck activity. I would say that’s hard to argue against, but curiosity still gets the better of me.
Click to expand...

Do you have Excel?

I think you need to get your hands on all this data and just start making yourself some charts and graphs. It will be fun, and you're going to learn a lot.

One neat wind data set is called a wind rose, I believe. And I think you can get them from NOAA. Basically, it plots the wind direction and speed along a 360 circle for the time period and location you're interested in.

Yep, it's a wind rose, here's one.


gml.noaa.gov

Data Visualization - NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

GML conducts research on greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone.
gml.noaa.gov
 
raisins said:
Do you have Excel?

I think you need to get your hands on all this data and just start making yourself some charts and graphs. It will be fun, and you're going to learn a lot.

One neat wind data set is called a wind rose, I believe. And I think you can get them from NOAA. Basically, it plots the wind direction and speed along a 360 circle for the time period and location you're interested in.

Yep, it's a wind rose, here's one.


gml.noaa.gov

Data Visualization - NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

GML conducts research on greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone.
gml.noaa.gov
Click to expand...
Excel at work, but Google Sheets at home.

A wind rose is what Spartan Forge uses on their desktop app. Very helpful in visualizing trends in wind direction as well as intensity in mph. For the most part in the South where I am there’s a lot of heavy trends out of the south eventually migrating to the west and some north later into the season.
 
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