Appreciate the advice sundialsvc4. The data actually are sorted. I figured out the problem with the help of the most excellent Devel::NYTProf. The problem was in pulling the met data which is 7300 rows by 9 columns for each cell. This transaction was taking about 28 to 29 ms. I have to figure out how to either compress this data or represent it in some other way so that it gets pulled out quickly.
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when small people start casting long shadows, it is time to go to bed