Wind

Here is something funny. Yesterday I dropped a handful of grass hay in front of my 6 week old bottle calf. She cautiously approached it, picked up a mouthful and and scared by it ran backwards trying to get away from it.
 
When I lived on the east coast I always laughed when the weathermen would announce a wind warning for 15 mph speeds. Our forecast today in SW MN is for constant 15 mph with gusts to 25 and it's not even considered windy. If winds go past 45 mph that is when we get a warning. Moving corn stalk bales here can sometimes turn into a blizzard of husks and leaves, haha.

That explains why I can count over 100 wind turbines from my front door.
 
There are some areas around here where the wind really blows. They say the wind blows in the Columbia Gorge 360 days of the year. The other 5 it is just changing direction. Out on the coast the wind coming off the Pacific blows regularly and hard in the winter. Here it rarely blows. I am at 2,700 feet elevation surrounded hills 4,700 to 5,400 feet tall right close around me. The only open side is to the east and we rarely get an east wind. I joke that the wind has to blow straight down to hit me.
 
It's an odd day around here when there isn't a 15-20 mph breeze. Worst wind comes out of the south, not often, but when it does it can be pretty bad because we are set up for a prevailing W or NW wind. Tumbleweeds roll around from fence to fence til they wear out.
 
I have always thought Wyoming was very windy. It has nothing on Iola Kansas. I was there for my son's high school graduation. It never stopped blowing the whole time I was there.
 
While still not as windy as states farther west, sustained winds and gusts of 40 to 50 mph have become much more common here in Kentucky over the last few years. The incidence of tornadoes has also increased.
I still remember a day in April over 50 years ago with sustained winds of 25 to 30 mph and gusts into the mid 40s. I was trying to patch fence and was worried about the roof on the barns and old schoolhouse. This was unusual for the time and remained in my memory for years. The last few years such days have become common.
Rains are more intense and we swing from one extreme to the other. Frosts and freezes linger well into April but the warm weather continues longer into the fall.
I marvel that seed time and harvest, the change of the seasons, have remained as constant as they have over the years.
 
I was curious what the fasted recorded wind in the United States was, so I googled it.

The fastest wind speed ever recorded in the continental United States was 231 mph (372 km/h), and it was recorded at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire on April 12, 1934. This gust is now famously known as "The Big Wind".
 
I have always thought Wyoming was very windy. It has nothing on Iola Kansas. I was there for my son's high school graduation. It never stopped blowing the whole time I was there.
Between Rock Springs and Green River the wind hit my pick up in '81. Spun me sideways and off of I 80. Thankfully I was only doing 20 in that mess. After getting back on I made it to Little America and spent the rest of the night in the front seat of that truck.
 

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