We don’t know about you but there have been quite a few times lately that we felt like we were going to get blown to the ground with how insane the wind has been, and as it turns out we’re not crazy for thinking that–according to meteorologists NYC has been especially windy lately!
Over the last few weeks, NYC has experienced several weeks of unusually persistent windy weather, with gusts often reaching as high as 30-40 mph. Winds this strong are considered “near gale” force by the National Weather Service, and they cause the sea to heap up and force white foam from breaking waves to blow in streaks along the direction of the wind, put whole trees in motion, and inconvenience people when walking against the wind.
To compare, average wind gusts in March typically clock in at 25 to 30 mph, otherwise classified as a “strong breeze,” but this past March more than half of the days experienced wind gusts in the 30 to 40 mph range, or “near gale” force.
Nelson Vaz, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service, blames these wind gusts on the several storm systems that moved across the central United States into the Great Lakes and to the interior or southeastern Canada.
Meteorologist Steven DiMartino, owner of NY NJ PA Weather, says that the change of seasons is contributing to these high winds as well. He stated:
We’re having changes in the season, which you would expect for this time of year being spring. This year, because of a lot of different forcing mechanisms — the polar vortex collapse, tropical force — things kind of all over the place is leading to enhancement of the polar and subtropical jet streams. What that basically means for you is that cold front and low pressure systems are a little bit more amped.
Apparently, conditions only worsen in urban environments like Manhattan–when air is forced in between two large buildings, gusts that are typically 20 miles per hour can turn into 40 mile per hour gusts.
And we’re not the only ones in NYC who have noticed the recently windier conditions–a Reddit user recently posted: “I feel like almost every day is windy with occasional super windy days. New York is fairly windy but I feel this year is more than usual. And by this year I mean – since autumn, this winter and up to now there are more windy or very windy days.” Another user responded, “It’s unusually windy, at least for what’s been normal in the past 10 years.”
In fact, AccuWeather notes that this March was the windiest on record in many U.S. cities and in the nation at large, with wind gusts and wind advisories breaking records. AccuWeather writes:
Over 1,500 reports of wind damage were submitted to the NWS during the month, far more than any previous March since records began in 1950…A total of 44 wind gusts over 75 mph were also reported…Throughout March, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued 124 high wind watches and 164 high wind warnings, both records for any month since records began in the 1980s.
Plus, a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change back in 2019 found that winds across much of North America, Europe, and Asia have been growing faster since about 2010. In less than a decade, the global average wind speed has increased from about 7 mph to about 7.4 mph, notes Scientific America, who names natural climate cycles as the likely culprit.
The good news: there will soon be some calmness to the chaos as the windy weather is expected to ease a bit by May. The caveat: those wind gusts will be replaced with severe thunderstorms.