Life on the Great Plains can bring three certainties: death, taxes, and wind. The Great Plains are generally some of the windiest places in the United States. This is mostly down to its geography. The Rocky Mountains to the west allow wind to blow off the mountains and spill into the plains. To the north, Canadian air spills into the central US. Due to the flat, mostly tree-less expanse of the plains, nothing slows down the air. Therefore, the plains are a constant source of wind, and high wind too.
On any given day, the average wind speed over the plains is around 5-8 mph. There are days when it is much higher. However, it probably does not get much worse than the region experienced on January 17-18, 1996. A powerful low-pressure system and an arctic front sent hurricane-force winds across Nebraska and Iowa for over 24 hours. The result was something to behold and will be seen in this installment of This Week in Weather History.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND HIGH WIND
Wind is vital to our weather, it is the mover of air masses, if we had no wind, we would have no weather. The wind is generated between differences in air pressure. You can feel it if you ever open a door between two spaces of different pressure and feel that blast of air hit you, that is the air moving between the two rooms to find balance. However, nature will never find that balance because of uneven heating by the sun, the changing landscape of the Earth, and our movement around the sun…