These are the weather summaries for the Boomershoot weather station and my weather station about 0.75 miles away at my pistol range (and underground bunker).
Boomershoot:
Pistol range:
Ignore the pressure difference. One is relative and the other is absolute. Also note that the second weather station is at least 50 feet from any man-made thing the generates heat.
Notice that the low temperature for Boomershoot was -13.4. and the low for the pistol range was 4.8 F. That is 18.20 degrees different!
The difference in the average is 3.7 F.
When I purchased the second weather station, I had some people roll their eyes at me. The implication was there is no significant difference between the two locations. Yet, from many years in the area, I suspected the Boomershoot site was colder than the surrounding fields. It just felt colder there.
I was right.
Is there an elevation difference? If boomershoot sits in a bowl it may be collecting cold night air.
I used to live in Laramie WY and there could easily be a 30 degree difference between Laramie at the bottom of the bowl and a couple of miles and a couple of thousand feet higher heading out of town on a still winter night.
Boomershoot is 3,000 ft. The pistol range is about 3,115 ft.
Boomershoot isn’t really a bowl. It is sort of a small valley with the weather station about halfway up one side on a wide ledge.
As the story goes, when the Ski Resort at Sun Valley was being planned, the architect for the ski lodge asked the old-timers there where the cows gathered on cold days. That was the warmest place around, so that’s where they wanted the ski lodge.
I’m assuming both thermometers were/are calibrated, or at least co-located for a sufficient period to determine operational variance.
If a local college teaches meteorology (real meteorology, not “TV Meteorology,”) it might be interesting for a few students to undertake a project examining local micro climates.
I live at the bottom of a hill that can’t be more than 150 to 200 ft in height. Every morning when I check my truck’s thermometer as I head out by the time I get to the top of the hill it’s at least two degrees warmer. Yep, microclimates.
On most days, the two stations track within one degree all day.
This morning the NWS station here in Tiny Town™ Wyoming read -11°F, while 3 miles away, at the same elevation but completely different area, our house read 5°F. Our new neighbor across the street has a station that is part of the WeatherChannel/Weather Underground network and usually reads identically to our back deck thermometer.
We’re on the lee side of a small mountain and when a west wind blows we get the effect of a Foehn wind sliding down the hillside at us. Last night with a very mild east wind we were at -9°F, and then a west wind suddenly picked up and started blowing gently (25 or 30 MPH is gentle here). The temperature went up from -9° to plus 9°F in 15 minutes, an 18° change in a quarter hour.
Hiked the Colorado Trail years back and one portion of the trail you could very quickly transition from rocky desert, lush ferns, to pine forest all in a five minute walk, influenced by valley stream and mountain face sun exposure.