The Wind

[communistworkethic]

I woke up to find my house on top of a witch with ruby slippers, at the end of a road made of yellow bricks. Winged monkeys were circling overhead, which was unusual for a Friday.

[TANGODANCER]

I woke up to find my house on top of a witch with ruby slippers, at the end of a road made of yellow bricks. Winged monkeys were circling overhead, which was unusual for a Friday.

Do you live in Blackburn then ?

[communistworkethic]

apparently I now live near FaninOz

[Soldier_Of_The_White_Army]

I woke up to find my house on top of a witch with ruby slippers, at the end of a road made of yellow bricks. Winged monkeys were circling overhead, which was unusual for a Friday.

You work in Blackburn?

[Bench]

I woke up to find my house on top of a witch with ruby slippers, at the end of a road made of yellow bricks. Winged monkeys were circling overhead, which was unusual for a Friday.

You work in Blackburn?

Nice try. But a full 1 minute late.

[Soldier_Of_The_White_Army]

I woke up to find my house on top of a witch with ruby slippers, at the end of a road made of yellow bricks. Winged monkeys were circling overhead, which was unusual for a Friday.

You work in Blackburn?

Nice try. But a full 1 minute late.

LOL aye



*Cough* Alan Green *Cough*

[TANGODANCER]

[David Lee's Hair]

David Dunn arrives home

[InsaneApache]

I woke up to find my house on top of a witch with ruby slippers, at the end of a road made of yellow bricks. Winged monkeys were circling overhead, which was unusual for a Friday.

You know that's quite a coincidence. A house fell on my first wifes sister as well.

[TANGODANCER]

"Whoo hoo" says the wind, "I'm a bold, bad fellow.
I blow down your chimney and whistle and bellow.
I'm a tease and a mischief in all that I do,
And I'm after you all" says the wind, "Whoo hoo"

Long distant memory from schooldays; seemed appropriate.

I'll get my coat.

[americantrotter]

I had to sit through a Hurricane in 03. That was a weird experience. No power for a week afterwards. Had to go stay with the folks. Work was flooded, trees down everywhere. Roofs missing. Thank God we werent actually on the coast, the damn thing had lost power by the time it got to us.

[americantrotter]

Isabel, it was.



Richmond, Virginia:

[communistworkethic]

was that due to a lesbian comediene moving in to the town too?

[Montreal Wanderer]

I had to sit through a Hurricane in 03. That was a weird experience. No power for a week afterwards. Had to go stay with the folks. Work was flooded, trees down everywhere. Roofs missing. Thank God we werent actually on the coast, the damn thing had lost power by the time it got to us.

The 1998 Ice Storm was worse - I was 9 days without power in Montreal in January! Luckily I had a gas boiler and, though the pump didn't work, I could fire it up with a 12 volt battery (I took me four days to figure out how to get round the safety devices with relative safety) and heat by gravity. It had got down to 1 degree celsius and five days later I had it up to 18, when the power was restored. Don't know how far south the storm reached. My power was restored, incidently, by a team from the Connecticut Edison Light and Power Company - so I have some fondness for our great neighbour to the south.

[americantrotter]

The worst Ice storms we had were in 94, but then again it could have been bad up in New England and sunny in Virginia.

Boston gets everything. Noreasters, it's the windiest US city, and of course the snow and ice. We're dodging a bullett today actually. Canadian air was supposed to arrive at the same time as precipitation. Sunny right now after some ice this morning.

[Montreal Wanderer]

The worst Ice storms we had were in 94, but then again it could have been bad up in New England and sunny in Virginia.

Boston gets everything. Noreasters, it's the windiest US city, and of course the snow and ice. We're dodging a bullett today actually. Canadian air was supposed to arrive at the same time as precipitation. Sunny right now after some ice this morning.

And I thought Chicago was the Windy City.

[americantrotter]

Political nickname. It is windy, but we are the windiest.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Political nickname. It is windy, but we are the windiest.

Mass. has the windiest spot but you are not in the top three cities:

Q: My son and I are trying to figure out the top three windiest cities in the USA. To my knowledge Chicago is number one and Minneapolis is number three. If I am wrong please let me know.

A: 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.

You can find information such as average wind speeds by going to the USATODAY.com Online weather almanac. From the almanac page, follow the link to Detailed information about U.S. weather averages and on that page scroll down to the link to "Average wind speeds for about 300 U.S. cities." I don't know of any list online that ranks the cities by wind speeds.

[TANGODANCER]

Er yes, been a bit windy over here last couple of days too (91 miles per hour yesterday at Winter Hill, home of the Reebok) Just thought I'd mention it.

[Henrik's fan club]

Me and my mate bought a kite in Manchester yesterday for a laugh....then a policeman confiscated it 'cos it was 'dangerous'