Northern Virginia Monthly Conditions

It was getting late in the winter, spring was just around the corner, but I wasn’t sure if now was the right time to sow some seeds for the garden. I looked for resources online for when to sow different seeds and the Farmer’s Almanac has a plant date for every seed and region imaginable. This let me know that a good time to sow most seeds, ie last frost date, was late April in Northern Virginia. However the Almanac did little to help me understand what the variations in temperatures, precipitation, or light could be for the plants.

I set out to create my own visualization that would help uncover why I ought to sow certain seeds at different parts of the year in Northern Virginia. I found that Dulles International Airport, has been collecting local weather data for 20+ years, and that data was available through NOAA. I downloaded this data, and visualized the variations in Tableau. I settled on using a box and whisker plot since that summarizes the distribution of temperatures across a discrete x-axis (months) well. My results showed me that the Almanac is right to think that April is the last frost date for this region.

Check out the visualization on Tableau Public here.