For Ames, the high temperature on Sunday was 51 and then Monday was 76 and on Tuesday was 58. This is the time of year for such variability as air masses battle during the spring and fall seasons. The featured chart presents a look at this variability with the standard deviation of daily high temperature shown computed via two methods. The simple "Single Day" method lumps all the calendar date observations into one population and measures the standard deviation for it. The other called "Day to Day" creates a population of the day to day high temperature difference each year for the given date. So while not exactly an apples to apples comparison, it does illustrate the point that the previous day's high temperature is likely a better forecast for today than last year's value.

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Tags:   stddev