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Wind Speed facts

While investigating facts about Wind Speed Today and Wind Speed Near Me, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Kurt Vonnegut's brother, Bernard, won an Ig Nobel prize for determining that the ability of a tornado to pluck the feathers from a chicken is not a good method of estimating its wind speed.

how wind speed is measured?

East Germans defected by various ways like digging long tunnels under the Berlin Wall, waiting for favorable winds and taking hot air balloons, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralight aircraft and, in one case, driving a sports car at full speed through the basic, initial fortifications.

What wind speed is dangerous?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what wind speed is high. Here are 50 of the best facts about Wind Speed Map and Wind Speed Chart I managed to collect.

what wind speed is windy?

  1. Chicago, "The Windy City", got that nickname not because of its weather, but because of its politicians bragging about the city to win the 1893 World's Fair. Its average wind speed of 10.3 mph is not even exceptional relative to other American cities: Boston- 12.4mph, and NYC- 9.3mph.

  2. The wind on Neptune can reach speeds of 1,240 miles per hour. This is equal to three times the speed of Earth's worst hurricanes.

  3. The blades of a wind turbine can reach speeds of more than 200 miles per hour at their tips.

  4. The FAA has set standards for using a wind sock to determine wind speed. According the FAA the wind sock will be fully extended in a 17 mile per hour wind. The FAA also states that the wind must be blowing at 3.5 miles per hour in order to properly determine wind direction.

  5. A ping-pong anemometer uses a ping-pong ball attached to a string that blows in the wind. The angle between the vertical and the ball is measured and this provides an estimate of the speed of wind.

  6. It is possible to sail in excess of twice the speed of the wind.

  7. Wind vanes can provide information about the wind direction but they do not provide information about what the wind changes or steadiness means. Because of this wind vanes today can be mounted to provide information that is combined with information from an anemometer to measure wind speed. They are often mounted on the same vertical rod as the wind vane and are able to be coordinated to provide a combined readout of direction and speed.

  8. Wind speed is determined by the angle of the wind sock to its mounting pole as the wind blows through it. The higher the wind sock is in the air the higher the wind speed. The lower the wind sock is in the air the lower the wind speed.

  9. A tube anemometer measures wind speed by measuring pressure of wind blown into a tube.

  10. A category four has winds between 131 and 155 miles per hour, and a category five has winds reaching speeds of more than 155 miles per hour.

wind speed facts
What wind speed is a hurricane?

Wind Speed data charts

For your convenience take a look at Wind Speed figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

wind speed fact data chart about Tropical cyclone wind speed vs. ocean water temperature
Tropical cyclone wind speed vs. ocean water temperature

wind speed fact data chart about 2017 Hurricane Season Expressed in Wind Speed
2017 Hurricane Season Expressed in Wind Speed

Why is it that on increasing the wind speed the rate of evaporation increases?

You can easily fact check why do we measure wind speed by examining the linked well-known sources.

Anemometers can be used to determine wind speed in an uncontained environment such as in the open air outside. They can also be used to measure wind speed of airflow in a contained environment.

Wind turbines can be as tall as 200 meters and have blades that can move at a speed of up to 200 mph.

An ultrasonic anemometer measures the speed of wind by measuring wind velocity based on ultrasonic sound waves.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, it has the third largest planetary radius and the fourth largest planetary mass in the Solar System. Uranus is unique because its axis of rotation is always tilted sideways, which means that its north and south poles are where other planets have their equators. Wind speeds can reach up to 560 miles per hour (900 kilometers per hour).

Laser ceilometers in meteorology are used for a variety of purposes including measuring aerosol in the atmosphere, cloud formations, the structure of the atmosphere, the composition of the atmosphere, precipitation, gas presence, gas concentration, wind turbulence, wind speed, changes in wind conditions, and to detect wind currents.

When wind speed is high?

Wind socks are often seen along highways to alert the drivers of high vehicles of wind direction and speed which should alter the driver's speed and way they handle the vehicle for safety.

How to measure wind speed without an anemometer?

Hurricanes are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 based on its wind speed.

Sailing stones are a geological phenomenon where rocks move and inscribe long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention. Frozen during cold winter nights, these thin floating ice panels are driven by wind and shove rocks at speeds up to 5 meters per minute.

Hypercanes are super hurricanes that can form when ocean temperatures exceed 120°F. They would have wind speeds in excess of 500 mph and are so tall that they literally dissolve the ozone layer.

While freefalling the wind passes by at a speed of 100 miles per hour.

The area in and around Oklahoma City has been hit by 5 F5 tornadoes in the last 20 years, and one of them was the strongest ever recorded with wind speeds of over 300 mph (1999, Moore) while another was the second strongest and the widest ever recorded at 2.7 miles wide (2013, El Reno).

Wind speed infographics

Beautiful visual representation of Wind Speed numbers and stats to get perspecive of the whole story.

wind speed fact infographic about Correlation between Butterfly Sizes and Wind Speeds

Correlation between Butterfly Sizes and Wind Speeds


wind speed fact infographic about Declining solar wind speed after a geomagnetic super storm t

Declining solar wind speed after a geomagnetic super storm that resulted in aurora as far south as Texas


When wind speeds?

Sailboats can travel faster than the wind. Racing yacht USA 17 was recorded at an incredible 3.35 times the speed of the wind

The wind speed sustained at 195 miles an hour which broke the previous 190 mile an hour record. Some gusts reached 235 miles an hour.

In 1992 Ivan Pedroso jumped 8m96 breaking the long jump World Record set by Mike Powell. The jump was later deemed invalid due to someone standing in front of the wind speed gauge. Pedroso also had to hand back a $130,000 Ferrari he won for breaking the record.

The temperature on the mountain gets well below freezing at - 80oF (- 62oC) and the wind can blow at speeds of 200 mph (322 Km/hr).

Mt Washington, NH had the highest recorded wind speed excluding tornadoes and cyclones at 231 mph (372 kmh).

How to calculate wind speed?

Exoplanet HD 189733 b has an average estimated wind speed of 4500 miles per hour, and an estimated top speed of 22000 miles per hour

The most extreme wind speed recorded on Earth is 253 mph (407 kph). This was on April 10, 1996, when Tropical Cyclone Olivia struck Barrow Island, off the coast of western Australia.

One of the benefits of a wind sock is that it provides real time information about wind speed and direction just by observing it in action.

All Trees, regardless of size, Break at the same Wind speed. (94 mph)

Height of anemometer placement is important for accuracy of wind speed measurement, as well as location in comparison to obstructions such as trees and buildings and canyons.

Anemometers are usually present on weather stations to measure the speed of wind.

It's windy on Uranus. The wind speeds sometimes reach 250 meters per second on Uranus. This would be equal to 900 km per hour winds or 560 miles per hour on Earth.

The AC72 sailboats were expected to be able to sail at 1.6 times the speed of the wind. In reality they actually regularly achieved 1.8 times the speed of the wind, with the speed record being 55 mph(2.2 times wind speed at the time)

The Chang-Gu World Trade Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan follows a Chinese pagoda style and has an octagonal base to be stable against high winds which are typical in Taiwan as it is prone to typhoons. It was tested to pressures equivalent of wind speeds in excess of 300 mph (480 km/h)

2015's Hurricane Patricia achieved 215 mph (346km/h) winds, the fastest recorded wind speeds of any tropical system in history and equivalent to an EF-5 tornado

Category 4 & Category 5 Hurricanes have nearly equivalent wind speeds compared to EF-2 & EF-3 Tornadoes.

The highest surface wind speed ever recorded (231 mph) happened on this date (April 12) in New Hampshire.

On November 7th typhoon Haiyan attained wind speeds of 145 miles per hour for 10 minutes and 195 miles per hour for sustained periods of one minute.

The average wind speed in Denmark is 7.6 metres per second, making it the world’s largest wind turbine exporter.

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Wind Speed. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Wind Speed so important!

Editor Veselin Nedev Editor