Water temperatures at Thomas Point MD light

As a frequent sea kayaker in the Chesapeake Bay area, I want to know the current air and water temperatures. The following graphic is based on an R program that reads the past roughly 45 days of data.

ndbc revised

Insights

  1. Combining air and water temperature makes it easy to estimate kayaking conditions, which are exposed and may entail immersion.
  2. During the period of 1.5 months water temperature has been declining fairly steadily.
  3. Air temperature is much more variable than water temperature.
  4. The daily cycle of air temperature is visible.

Original graphic (earlier data)

ndbc original

Revisions and discussion

Source and technology

Data read directly from the NOAA website for Thomas Point.
Programming in R and web page coding in Dreamweaver.

2011/03/10