It's windy
18/01/14 05:45
Once again we can hear the wind howling outdoors. We’ve had several very windy days this week. It really isn’t that unusual for this part of the world and, for the most of my life I have lived in windy places. According to the National Weather Service strong northwest winds will continue throughout the morning hours with winds of 30 to 45 mph and gusts up to 65 mph. If I remember quickly it takes sustained winds of more than 40 mph or gusts over 60 mph for the weather service to issue a high wind warning. I guess we qualify.
I’ve experienced lots of windy days in my life. My home town, Big Timber, was noted for its high winds. Located on the east slope of the Rockies, the distance from the mountains was just right. The Yellowstone River acted like a funnel and winds channeled into the valley and accelerated as they moved downhill from Bozeman and Livingston. After all the wind farm project at Livingston was abandoned because the winds are simply too high. A common pastime for locals in my town was salvaging motorhomes, campers, trailers and even mobile homes that had blown off of the highways. There were plenty of them.
My father loved to study the weather and made several attempts to install functional weather stations in our community. The problem was that the anemometers (wind gauges) that were available at the time would blow apart and break at wind speeds of over 100 mph and we occasionally got a gust that did them in.
100 mph isn’t anything compared to the 253 mph wind that was recorded at Barrow Island, Australia. But then that wind was measured during Tropical Cyclone Olivia. In the US, the highest wind speed ever recorded was 231 mph at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire. They had to design and build a custom, heated, anemometer to record the gust.
Tornadoes may have wind speeds that are higher than those, but so far, those winds are impossible to measure because of the spiraling effect. 302 is the highest wind speed ever measured in a tornado, but the particular technology used is notable for giving inaccurate readings, so there is some debate about what the real speed might be.
Having avoided tornadoes and cyclones in my life thus far and having no particular interest in being caught up in either of them, I have, however, experienced some high winds.
The published stall speed of a 150 hp Piper Super Cub is 43 mph with the flaps down. We could reliably sustain flight between 45 and 50 mph in our cubs. I have flown backwards in a Super Cub. All it takes is to turn into the wind when it is going faster than the stall speed of the cub. In really high wind, we could land the airplane with little or no roll out on the asphalt pad in front of the hanger. What we couldn’t do was taxi cross wind in the cubs.
I drove home from Chamberlain, SD, one day when the winds were so high that we saw two semi tractor-trailer rigs that had blown over on their sides. We had our old pop-up camper on our pickup and our gas mileage was down to 7.8 mpg at one point heading into the wind. We had slowed to under 50 mph to protect the camper. at 50 mph, a 75 mph wind gust on the nose of the truck makes the airspeed 125 over the top of the rig.
We designed a high wind tetrahedron kite when I was a kid. We used 1/2 inch oak dowels for rods and aircraft Dacron for the sails. The sides of the kite were 3 feet long. After experimenting with the basic kite, we made three more and joined them into a 9’ kite. It was an interesting concept and we did fly it a few times, but we didn’t weight enough to hold it down. On the day of our windiest trial, we had to wrap the nylon parachute cord we were using for flying line around the bumper of a car to hold it down. In lighter winds, the cord weighed too much for the kite to fly with more than about 50 yards of line out. The cord would eventually sag so much that it would touch the ground between us and the kite and the effective maximum altitude of the kite was reached. We never got to test it in the highest wind because we couldn’t figure out how to do so. I always believed that it would produce enough lift to pick me up off of the ground if the conditions were right,
But I know stories of the wind that exceed the reality.
I’ve probably told you about the days when it is so windy up along the North Dakota/South Dakota line that the wind blows the state line down south of Lemmon and the merchants have to charge North Dakota sales tax until the wind dies down.
The wind in my home town is so strong that the cattle build up the muscles on one side in order to be able to stand up in the wind. When you take them inside out of the wind they fall over because they don’t have wind to hold them up.
It’s so windy in my home town that people take buckets of sand outdoors and throw them up into the air. The process sandblasts their homes so they don’t have to scrape before painting.
It’s so windy that the firemen had to park the truck two blocks upwind to get the water on the fire.
It’s so windy that the flag pole in front of the Legion Building had to be mounted at a 45 degree angle so it would stand up straight in the wind.
It’s so windy in my home town that one day we drove down to Billings and arrived an hour before we left. Then when we got into the car to go home the speedometer went backwards.
It’s so windy that it raised whitecaps in the toilet.
It’s so windy that we could grab a chicken and hold it up and it would be plucked before we wrung its neck.
It’s so windy that the weather service asked me to stop preaching.
There are a thousand more, but something tells me I need to save some for another windy day. This probably isn’t our last.
I’ve experienced lots of windy days in my life. My home town, Big Timber, was noted for its high winds. Located on the east slope of the Rockies, the distance from the mountains was just right. The Yellowstone River acted like a funnel and winds channeled into the valley and accelerated as they moved downhill from Bozeman and Livingston. After all the wind farm project at Livingston was abandoned because the winds are simply too high. A common pastime for locals in my town was salvaging motorhomes, campers, trailers and even mobile homes that had blown off of the highways. There were plenty of them.
My father loved to study the weather and made several attempts to install functional weather stations in our community. The problem was that the anemometers (wind gauges) that were available at the time would blow apart and break at wind speeds of over 100 mph and we occasionally got a gust that did them in.
100 mph isn’t anything compared to the 253 mph wind that was recorded at Barrow Island, Australia. But then that wind was measured during Tropical Cyclone Olivia. In the US, the highest wind speed ever recorded was 231 mph at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire. They had to design and build a custom, heated, anemometer to record the gust.
Tornadoes may have wind speeds that are higher than those, but so far, those winds are impossible to measure because of the spiraling effect. 302 is the highest wind speed ever measured in a tornado, but the particular technology used is notable for giving inaccurate readings, so there is some debate about what the real speed might be.
Having avoided tornadoes and cyclones in my life thus far and having no particular interest in being caught up in either of them, I have, however, experienced some high winds.
The published stall speed of a 150 hp Piper Super Cub is 43 mph with the flaps down. We could reliably sustain flight between 45 and 50 mph in our cubs. I have flown backwards in a Super Cub. All it takes is to turn into the wind when it is going faster than the stall speed of the cub. In really high wind, we could land the airplane with little or no roll out on the asphalt pad in front of the hanger. What we couldn’t do was taxi cross wind in the cubs.
I drove home from Chamberlain, SD, one day when the winds were so high that we saw two semi tractor-trailer rigs that had blown over on their sides. We had our old pop-up camper on our pickup and our gas mileage was down to 7.8 mpg at one point heading into the wind. We had slowed to under 50 mph to protect the camper. at 50 mph, a 75 mph wind gust on the nose of the truck makes the airspeed 125 over the top of the rig.
We designed a high wind tetrahedron kite when I was a kid. We used 1/2 inch oak dowels for rods and aircraft Dacron for the sails. The sides of the kite were 3 feet long. After experimenting with the basic kite, we made three more and joined them into a 9’ kite. It was an interesting concept and we did fly it a few times, but we didn’t weight enough to hold it down. On the day of our windiest trial, we had to wrap the nylon parachute cord we were using for flying line around the bumper of a car to hold it down. In lighter winds, the cord weighed too much for the kite to fly with more than about 50 yards of line out. The cord would eventually sag so much that it would touch the ground between us and the kite and the effective maximum altitude of the kite was reached. We never got to test it in the highest wind because we couldn’t figure out how to do so. I always believed that it would produce enough lift to pick me up off of the ground if the conditions were right,
But I know stories of the wind that exceed the reality.
I’ve probably told you about the days when it is so windy up along the North Dakota/South Dakota line that the wind blows the state line down south of Lemmon and the merchants have to charge North Dakota sales tax until the wind dies down.
The wind in my home town is so strong that the cattle build up the muscles on one side in order to be able to stand up in the wind. When you take them inside out of the wind they fall over because they don’t have wind to hold them up.
It’s so windy in my home town that people take buckets of sand outdoors and throw them up into the air. The process sandblasts their homes so they don’t have to scrape before painting.
It’s so windy that the firemen had to park the truck two blocks upwind to get the water on the fire.
It’s so windy that the flag pole in front of the Legion Building had to be mounted at a 45 degree angle so it would stand up straight in the wind.
It’s so windy in my home town that one day we drove down to Billings and arrived an hour before we left. Then when we got into the car to go home the speedometer went backwards.
It’s so windy that it raised whitecaps in the toilet.
It’s so windy that we could grab a chicken and hold it up and it would be plucked before we wrung its neck.
It’s so windy that the weather service asked me to stop preaching.
There are a thousand more, but something tells me I need to save some for another windy day. This probably isn’t our last.