50 Fun Facts About Wind

Which planet has the strongest sustained winds in the Solar System, blowing as fast as 2,100 km/h?

Neptune drives its storms at up to 2,100 km/h despite getting very little sunlight. Heat from inside the planet is enough to power the fastest planetary winds in the Solar System.

Which peak in the northeastern United States clocked a 231 mph wind in 1934, a world record for six decades?

Mount Washington's summit observatory logged the gust on April 12, 1934, and hurricane-force gusts still hit the New Hampshire peak on about 110 days a year.

Which Japanese word meaning 'divine wind' named the typhoons said to have wrecked Kublai Khan's invasion fleets?

Kamikaze storms hit in 1274 and 1281, scattering Mongol fleets that greatly outnumbered Japan's defenders. Historians still dispute how big those fleets really were.

Which continent is the windiest on Earth, home to a bay where winds regularly exceed 240 km/h?

Antarctica is the windiest continent because cold, dense air slides down its ice sheet to the coast, which makes Commonwealth Bay the windiest place on record.

Which wind scale, running from 0 for calm to 12 for hurricane force, is named after a Royal Navy officer?

Beaufort drew up the scale in 1805 without any wind speeds: each level described what the wind did to the sails of a frigate.

Which fast, narrow air currents high in the atmosphere do airlines ride eastward to save flight time and fuel?

Jet streams flow from west to east, so eastbound flights get a free push. Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Oishi detected one in the 1920s.

Which weather instrument measures wind speed, classically with spinning cups mounted on a vertical shaft?

Anemometer cups turn faster as the wind strengthens. Thomas Romney Robinson of Armagh Observatory introduced the four-cup design in the 1840s.

Which windless belt near the equator could strand sailing ships for days or weeks in the Age of Sail?

The doldrums sit where winds from both hemispheres meet and rise, leaving hot, still air. The word first meant low spirits; sailors used it for becalmed ships before it came to name the belt itself.

Which fictional nanny is blown in by the east wind and carried off again when the west wind arrives?

Mary Poppins lands at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane with her carpet bag in P. L. Travers's 1934 book, then opens her umbrella to leave.

Which Great Lakes city is nicknamed the Windy City, although Boston's average wind speed is actually higher?

Chicago averages about 10 mph of wind against Boston's 12, and the nickname first spread in print in 1876 during a rivalry with Cincinnati.

Which steady easterly air currents near the equator did captains of sailing ships follow to cross the oceans?

Trade winds blow from the east so reliably that captains planned whole voyages around them. Europeans only learned the Pacific's full wind pattern on Andrés de Urdaneta's 1565 voyage.

Which prevailing winds of the middle latitudes, between 30 and 60 degrees, carry most weather eastward?

Westerlies strengthen in winter, when pressure near the poles drops lowest, and they drive ocean currents that carry warm water toward higher latitudes.

Which effect of Earth's rotation bends winds to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and left in the Southern?

Coriolis deflection is strongest near the poles and fades to zero at the equator. French scientist Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis set out the maths in 1835 while studying water wheels.

Which animal gives its name to the calm, sunny latitudes about 30 degrees either side of the equator?

Horse latitudes lie under sinking dry air that helps create deserts such as the Sahara. One popular but doubted story says becalmed Spanish ships dumped their animals overboard there.

Which nickname did sailors give the Southern Hemisphere winds that Dutch ships rode to halve the trip to Java?

Roaring Forties winds blow between 40 and 50 degrees of latitude, where almost no land slows them. Hendrik Brouwer's 1611 route used them to reach Java in under six months.

Which energy source ultimately drives Earth's winds by heating the equator far more strongly than the poles?

The Sun warms the planet unevenly, and the resulting differences in air pressure set air moving from high pressure toward low. Earth's spin then bends that flow into belts.

Which lines on a weather map join places of equal air pressure, with tight spacing signalling strong wind?

Isobars packed close together show pressure changing quickly over a short distance, which makes air rush faster. The name comes from the Greek word for weight.

Toward which compass point does the air in a 'northerly' wind actually travel, given how winds are named?

South is where a northerly is heading, because winds are named for the direction they blow from. Charts called wind roses plot how often the wind arrives from each compass direction.

Which loop of tropical air, named after an English lawyer, rises at the equator and sinks near 30 degrees?

Hadley cell circulation carries the bulk of the atmosphere's motion. George Hadley proposed it in 1735 to explain why tropical winds blow so steadily from the east.

Which coastal wind blows from the water onto the land because the ground heats up faster than the water?

Sea breeze fronts frequently trigger thunderstorms over Florida, where the ones pushing inland from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts can collide in the middle of the state.

At which time of day does a coastal wind usually reverse and blow from the shore out over the water?

Night lets the land cool faster than the water, so air sinks over the shore and drifts seaward. The flow is usually shallower than the daytime one.

Which seasonal reversing wind, named from an Arabic word for season, brings heavy summer rain to India?

Monsoon reached English by way of Portuguese, and the word was first used in British India for the rain-bearing winds blowing in off the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal.

Which Greek-derived term describes a wind of cold, dense air that gravity pulls down a slope?

Katabatic comes from the Greek for descent. Greenland's piteraq and the cool air that drains into mountain valleys after dark are both winds of this kind.

Which warm, dry mountain wind of the North American interior do the Blackfoot people call the 'snow eater'?

Chinook winds can lift winter temperatures from below −20 °C to above 10 °C within hours. The name comes from the Chinook people of the lower Columbia River.

Which German name is given to the warm, dry wind that descends the sheltered side of the Alps?

Foehn air has dropped its moisture on the way up and warms as it sinks, giving Switzerland, southern Germany and Austria a milder climate. Climbers on the Eiger dread it.

Which hot, dry autumn winds blow from the Great Basin toward the coast and fan wildfires around Los Angeles?

Santa Ana winds warm as they are compressed on the way down to the Pacific, and they often bring coastal Southern California its lowest humidity of the year.

Which hot wind carries Sahara dust across the Mediterranean, sometimes colouring southern Italy's rain red?

Sirocco gusts can reach hurricane speeds in North Africa and Southern Europe, and the red sand they drop with rain over Italy is known locally as blood rain.

Which cold, strong wind roars down France's Rhône Valley and gives Provence its famously clear skies?

Mistral means 'masterly' in the Occitan dialect of Languedoc, and the wind can top 90 km/h before spilling into the Gulf of Lion.

Which dry, dusty wind blows from the Sahara over West Africa between late November and mid-March?

Harmattan air is so dry beside the humid tropics that it is nicknamed the doctor wind, yet its dust haze can cut visibility like a heavy fog for days.

Which rooftop instrument, traditionally topped with a cockerel, swings to show where the wind is blowing from?

Weather vane roosters spread after a ninth-century pope is said to have ordered the bird, the emblem of Saint Peter, onto every church steeple.

Which unit of wind speed, equal to one nautical mile per hour, do sailors and pilots still use?

Knots take their name from the knotted line sailors once let run out behind a ship, counting how many slipped through their fingers while a sand-glass ran.

Which striped fabric cone at airports shows pilots the wind's direction and, by how far it extends, the strength?

Windsock stripes once worked as a gauge: each stripe held out straight added about 5.6 km/h, and a fully extended sock means roughly 28 km/h or more.

The Enhanced Fujita scale rates which violent rotating storms from EF0 to EF5 by the damage they leave behind?

Tornadoes get their rating from a survey of the wreckage, so the scale only estimates wind speed. Ted Fujita introduced the original version in 1971.

Which two-word term describes how much colder moving air makes exposed skin feel than the thermometer shows?

Wind chill tables were first worked out by Paul Siple and Charles Passel on an expedition before the Second World War, and US forecasters adopted them by the 1970s.

Which country's Barrow Island logged a 408 km/h gust in a 1996 cyclone, the strongest a weather station has recorded?

Australia's record gust came from Tropical Cyclone Olivia, which also knocked over 30 oil pumpjacks on the island. It beat a mark that had stood since 1934.

Which Southern Hemisphere capital beside the Cook Strait is known as the world's windiest city by average speed?

Wellington sits at the mouth of a narrow strait that funnels gales between New Zealand's two main islands, and its wind averages about 27 km/h across the year.

Which Spanish-named windstorm, a fast-moving band of thunderstorms, leaves a damage path hundreds of kilometres long?

Derecho means 'straight' in Spanish. Gustavus Hinrichs chose the word in 1888 to set these winds apart from the twisting kind, after one crossed Iowa in 1877.

Which Arabic-named wall of dust, first described in Sudan, is kicked up by the cold downdraft of a thunderstorm?

Haboob walls recorded at Khartoum have towered about 2,000 m high and rolled forward at up to 70 km/h. The word comes from an Arabic root meaning to blow.

Which part of a hurricane contains the strongest winds, wrapping around the calm at the storm's centre?

The eyewall is a ring of towering thunderstorms, and instead of a neat circle it sometimes forms polygons, from triangles to hexagons.

Which Cervantes hero charges a row of windmills in the belief that they are ferocious giants?

Don Quixote's charge, which opens his adventures with Sancho Panza, gave English the idiom 'tilting at windmills' for attacking imaginary enemies.

Which keeper of the winds in Homer's Odyssey gives Odysseus a bag holding every wind but the gentle west one?

Aeolus saw his gift wasted: within sight of home the crew opened the bag hoping for treasure, and the escaping winds blew the ships all the way back.

Which Greek god of the west wind, called the messenger of spring, lent English a word for a soft, light wind?

Zephyrus was the gentlest of the wind gods, and in the tale of Eros and Psyche he carries Psyche to the home of Eros.

Which British author turned bedtime stories for his son into the 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows?

Kenneth Grahame sent more of Toad's adventures in letters to young Alastair, and he retired as Secretary of the Bank of England the year the book appeared.

Which glowing sky displays appear at high latitudes when the solar wind disturbs Earth's magnetic field?

Auroras glow when charged particles from the Sun strike atoms high in the atmosphere, and gusts in that stream of particles make the lights flare.

Which 1930s disaster saw drought and wind strip ploughed topsoil from the North American prairies?

Dust Bowl storms struck after settlers ploughed up the natural topsoil without methods to stop erosion, and the disaster inspired John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath.

In which land did the earliest known windmills appear, turning upright sails around a vertical shaft?

Persia's early mills were built to pump water and later adapted to grind grain. The familiar windmill with sails on a horizontal axle only appeared in northwestern Europe in the 12th century.

Which country built the world's first offshore wind farm in 1991, off the island of Lolland?

Denmark's Vindeby farm ran for 25 years before it was taken down in 2017, and it began a long fall in the cost of offshore wind power.

Which American fantasy author wrote The Name of the Wind, whose innkeeper Kote is secretly the hero Kvothe?

Patrick Rothfuss wrote the novel while studying for his English degree. Published in 2007, it opens The Kingkiller Chronicle.

Which fine, wind-blown silt forms thick fertile deposits and gives China's Yellow River its colour?

Loess has been farmed in China for more than a thousand years with phenomenal yields, and its German name is a cousin of the English word loose.

Which country's Kinderdijk windmills, a World Heritage Site, were built around 1740 to keep drained farmland dry?

The Netherlands lined up 19 mills there to lift water out of the polder, and they remain the country's largest concentration of old windmills.