Help - Upper Hunter map

Map landing page

When you open the webpage you will see fine particle concentrations, wind speed and wind direction for current monitoring sites overlaid on a map of the Upper Hunter.

You can change the map background using the blue Base Layer legend at the top to show either:

• Streets map - this is the default view showing towns, roads, reserves and bodies of water
• Physical map - which adds hills and valleys
• Satellite map - using this layer mine sites are easily seen
• Hybrid map - a combination of the streets map and satelliite map

Zooming in

You can zoom in on an area of interest (eg. Singleton sites) by double-clicking on any part of the map near a wind rose. The map will then zoom in and centre around the point chosen with the double-clicking. You can repeatedly double-click to increase the zoom level.  As you zoom in, the wind roses may move off the map (Fig 1). To view the wind roses, click the button Reset Icons and the wind roses will centre over each site location (Fig 2).

Wind rose and particle information

Mouse rollover function

You can display detailed monitoring data for each site by moving the mouse cursor over a wind rose. A data table window will pop up. If the mouse is moved from one wind rose to another, a data table will pop up for each selected site. 

You can close the table window either by clicking the Close button in the upper right-hand corner of the window or by clicking anywhere on the map clear of the table.

Wind rose icons display wind speed (in km per hour) and wind direction (in degrees) as hourly average values.  Wind direction is indicated by the black arrow and indicates the direction that the wind is coming from.

Coloured boxes underneath the wind roses display 24-hour rolling average values for PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ for the last hour recorded in the air quality database. The colour of each box is determined by comparing the 24-hour rolling average to the National Environment Protection Measure PM₁₀ standard (50 µg/m³) and the PM_2.5 advisory reporting standard (25 µg/m³).

Measurement units

Data tables

The data tables (Fig 3) display the current 24-hour rolling average in bold along with the related 24-hourly average particle levels used to calculate the 24-hour average. Hourly averaged wind speed and wind direction values during this 24-hour period are also displayed. 

Fig 3 - Data table

Graphs

The graphs display the last 7 days of hourly averaged data only for fine particles in the top graph and wind speed and wind direction in the bottom graph (Fig 4). 

Fig 4 - Graphs: Hourly particle and wind speed/wind direction

The title header contains instructions for the use of these graphs:

• Mouse over to highlight individual values -  roll the mouse over the lines in the graph to display individual particle levels or wind speed and wind direction values
• Click and drag to zoom - move the mouse to the area of interest, click and hold left mouse button and drag the mouse to the right to zoom into time period of interest. Both graphs will zoom out together.
  NOTE: in Firefox, the selected region is highlighted as the mouse is dragged to the right; Internet Explorer does not highlight the selection. (Fig 5)

      Fig 5 - Graph zoom capability

• Double-click to zoom out - to return to original graph display, double-click anywhere on the zoomed-in graph.

Wind direction

Wind direction is measured in degrees (⁰)  starting from 0⁰ going clockwise to 360⁰ (similar to a compass) and is defined as the direction from which the wind blows  (Fig 6). 

Fig 6 - Wind rose

You can see from Fig 6 that both 0⁰ and 360⁰ define a wind direction from the North (N).  This means that a change in wind direction from, say, 2⁰ to 358⁰ may sound significant but, in fact, is only a slight change in direction. The wind monitors are aligned to true North.

Wind speed

Wind speed is measured and recorded in the OEH database in metres/second (m/s). Wind speeds have been converted to kilometres/hour (km/hr) for display on these web pages.

Wind speed conversion table

^{* These wind speed ranges are approximate only.}