Speaking of weather, I guess we are in for a big winter storm this weekend. I haven't been paying attention to the weather channel but everyone at work keeps telling me about it. I hope it is not too bad since we are scheduled to play in a co-ed volleyball tournament on Sat. with some people from my work and also with John and Wendi. Well, I am off to my much awaited haircut in the Cities this afternoon. I am having dinner with Allison at PF Changes before my appointment and I can't wait!
10 Windiest Cities
- Blue Hill, MA
- Dodge City, KA
- Amarillo, TX
- Rochester, MN
- Casper, WY [and]
- Cheyenne, WY [tie]
- Great Falls, MT
- Goodland, KA
- Boston, MA
- Lubbock, MA
Despite it's "windy city" nickname, Chicago isn't particularly windy. The nickname goes back to at least the 1870s, but exactly how it came to be used apparently isn't known. I have more on that below my answer about the meteorological aspect of Chicago being "windy." .
In general the windiest parts of the USA are Alaska and the western Plains, just east of the Rockies. A few other places near the coasts are also windy.
A few years ago the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) put out a list of the 10 windiest cities in the USA. The windiest place on this list is Blue Hill, Mass., with an average annual wind speed of 15.4 mph. Blue Hill, of course, isn't a city. It's a weather observatory atop a hill near Boston. I would consider it a "place," not a city. If you want to talk about the place with regular, year-round weather observations that has the highest winds, it's clearly Mt. Washington, N.H., with an average of 35.4 mph.
Another problem with the NCDC list is that it doesn't seem to include Alaska. (Apparently no one has told the NCDC or the National Weather Service (NWS) that Alaska and Hawaii became states in 1959. The NCDC often doesn't include Alaska and Hawaii on list such as the windiest cities and the Weather Service does not include these two states in its daily listing of the nation's highest and lowest temperatures. USA TODAY knows Alaska and Hawaii are states and goes to some extra effort to include them on our list of daily extreme temperatures when some place in either state should be on the list.)
Anyway, a NWS list of annual average wind speeds for about 300 places around the USA with regular weather observations has the top three in Alaska. They are:
- St. Paul Island, 17.4 mph
- Cold Bay, 16.9 mph
- Barter Island, 13.2 mph
On the NCDC list that does not include Alaska nor Mt. Washington, numbers 2, 3 and 4 after Blue Hill are:
- Dodge City Kan. 14.0
- Amarillo, Texas, 13.5
- Rochester, Minn., 13.1
Minneapolis isn't all that far from Rochester, Minn., but the average at the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport is only 10.5 mph. Still, this is faster than Chicago's annual average wind speed of 10.4 mph. A couple of other cities with average higher winds that Chicago that I happened to find are Boston with 12.5 mph and New York City's JFK Airport (which is near the Atlantic Ocean) with 12.2 mph.
3 comments:
We don't know about Rochester's wind, but we have had some experience in Amarillo. It can also be snowy. We drove through there in January 2001 to attend David and Nichola's wedding in Oklahoma. In fact, we had a major snow storm starting in Burns and drove on snow and ice for the rest of the 2000 miles. The morning in Gallup, NM began with over a foot of snow and a closed Interstate.
I'm impressed with all of your research!! :) I hope the storm is not as bad as they are predicting. Sure hope the temp. in Phoenix is nice and very warm!!
Looking forward to seeing your new haircut! Good luck on your v-ball tourney. Love you both, mom P.
I believe it. It was so windy this morning! I can't wait to see pics of your haircut!
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