Loop to sum weekly rolling average - r

Question

I am new to coding. I have a data set of daily stream flow averages over 20 years. Following is an example:
DATE FLOW
1 10/1/2001 88.2
2 10/2/2001 77.6
3 10/3/2001 68.4
4 10/4/2001 61.5
5 10/5/2001 55.3
6 10/6/2001 52.5
7 10/7/2001 49.7
8 10/8/2001 46.7
9 10/9/2001 43.3
10 10/10/2001 41.3
11 10/11/2001 39.3
12 10/12/2001 37.7
13 10/13/2001 35.8
14 10/14/2001 34.1
15 10/15/2001 39.8
I need to create a loop summing the previous 6 days as well as the current day (rolling weekly average), and print it to an array for the designated water year. I have already created an aggregate function to separate yearly average daily means into their designated water years.
# Separating dates into specific water years
wtr_yr <- function(dates, start_month=9)
# Convert dates into POSIXlt
POSIDATE = as.POSIXlt(NEW_DATE)
# Year offset
offset = ifelse(POSIDATE$mon >= start_month - 1, 1, 0)
# Water year
adj.year = POSIDATE$year + 1900 + offset
# Aggregating the water year function to take the mean
mean.FLOW=aggregate(data_set$FLOW,list(adj.year), mean)

Answer 1

It seems that it can be done much more easily.
But first I need to prepare a bit more data.
library(tidyverse)
library(lubridate)
df = tibble(
DATE = seq(mdy("1/1/2010"), mdy("12/31/2022"), 1),
FLOW = rnorm(length(DATE), 40, 10)
)
output
# A tibble: 4,748 x 2
DATE FLOW
<date> <dbl>
1 2010-01-01 34.4
2 2010-01-02 37.7
3 2010-01-03 55.6
4 2010-01-04 40.7
5 2010-01-05 41.3
6 2010-01-06 57.2
7 2010-01-07 44.6
8 2010-01-08 27.3
9 2010-01-09 33.1
10 2010-01-10 35.5
# ... with 4,738 more rows
Now let's do the aggregation by year and week number
df %>%
group_by(year(DATE), week(DATE)) %>%
summarise(mean = mean(FLOW))
output
# A tibble: 689 x 3
# Groups: year(DATE) [13]
`year(DATE)` `week(DATE)` mean
<dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 2010 1 44.5
2 2010 2 39.6
3 2010 3 38.5
4 2010 4 35.3
5 2010 5 44.1
6 2010 6 39.4
7 2010 7 41.3
8 2010 8 43.9
9 2010 9 38.5
10 2010 10 42.4
# ... with 679 more rows
Note, for the function week, the first week starts on January 1st. If you want to number the weeks according to the ISO 8601 standard, use the isoweek function. Alternatively, you can also use an epiweek compatible with the US CDC.
df %>%
group_by(year(DATE), isoweek(DATE)) %>%
summarise(mean = mean(FLOW))
output
# A tibble: 681 x 3
# Groups: year(DATE) [13]
`year(DATE)` `isoweek(DATE)` mean
<dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 2010 1 40.0
2 2010 2 45.5
3 2010 3 33.2
4 2010 4 38.9
5 2010 5 45.0
6 2010 6 40.7
7 2010 7 38.5
8 2010 8 42.5
9 2010 9 37.1
10 2010 10 42.4
# ... with 671 more rows
If you want to better understand how these functions work, please follow the code below
df %>%
mutate(
w1 = week(DATE),
w2 = isoweek(DATE),
w3 = epiweek(DATE)
)
output
# A tibble: 4,748 x 5
DATE FLOW w1 w2 w3
<date> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 2010-01-01 34.4 1 53 52
2 2010-01-02 37.7 1 53 52
3 2010-01-03 55.6 1 53 1
4 2010-01-04 40.7 1 1 1
5 2010-01-05 41.3 1 1 1
6 2010-01-06 57.2 1 1 1
7 2010-01-07 44.6 1 1 1
8 2010-01-08 27.3 2 1 1
9 2010-01-09 33.1 2 1 1
10 2010-01-10 35.5 2 1 2
# ... with 4,738 more rows