Wind in New Mexico (Ruidoso, White Sands: county, dry, water)
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Here's the NOAA data for the El Paso Airport on Friday, 03/26/2010:
Quote:
WIND (MPH)
HIGHEST WIND SPEED 56 HIGHEST WIND DIRECTION W (270)
HIGHEST GUST SPEED 84 HIGHEST GUST DIRECTION W (260)
AVERAGE WIND SPEED 21.4
Not sure how to derive a mean from the above information since the "average" takes in a 24 hour period. Perhaps "highest wind" is during the peak winds in the afternoon and represents the highest sustained wind during that period?
Yesterday was a doosey. The wind peeled a metal roof from a home in Elephant Butte. Hopefully they'll use more screws to secure it during the repair. It was probably a bad hair day statewide, for those of us who still have a lick.
I always thought the whole NM wind thing was overdone, although I think it had more to do with where we lived than anything else.
We lived near Eubank and Juan Tabo in ABQ for three spring seasons, and although it was occasionally windy with some decent gusts, it wasn't bad. I found it to be windier on the plains of Okla than up in the NE Heights. I think it's a different story over on the west side of ABQ. There were many times we'd see dust across the entire west side, with nary a trace up in the Heights.
The only REAL dust storm we ever encountered was on our one and only trip to Las Cruces - it was literally a brown-out of the dust variety, after which we had to change the car's air filter. I've heard the southern dust storms can be quite bad.
I always thought the whole NM wind thing was overdone, although I think it had more to do with where we lived than anything else.
We lived near Eubank and Juan Tabo in ABQ for three spring seasons, and although it was occasionally windy with some decent gusts, it wasn't bad. I found it to be windier on the plains of Okla than up in the NE Heights. I think it's a different story over on the west side of ABQ. There were many times we'd see dust across the entire west side, with nary a trace up in the Heights.
The only REAL dust storm we ever encountered was on our one and only trip to Las Cruces - it was literally a brown-out of the dust variety, after which we had to change the car's air filter. I've heard the southern dust storms can be quite bad.
I think the whole wind in NM is overdone also, ABQ is only windy in the spring, and not even that often, its perfect for the rest of the year, Eastern NM is windy all the time and in the winter really sucks, wind and cold SUCKS, Farmington aint bad but I have heard Deming and Cruces is reallly windy, cant speak on that though.
The people I've met who came from Deming say the wind is much worse there than T or C and Elephant Butte. I don't know what people consider worse or overdone, nothing beats a whole roof being uplifted and torn off. That's kind of like tornado force, I would think.
Give another meaning to the term 'brown out' doesn't it! Here in Ruidoso we see 'white outs' as much of the White Sands blows through on such days. And if there happens to be a sprinkle of rain along with the white out it can leave a white film on your car as if you'd been parked in salt spray at the beach.
Hold onto your hat again tomorrow - Monday, April 5 - as another day of brown skies and sandblasting is forecast.
PS Deming and Lordsburg have to be the worst for dust storms, even though the winds can be just as strong in other areas of the state. It's common to close down IH-10 on the worst days. The past week the highway was shut down for about six hours during the afternoon, according to my neighbor who hit a NMHP road block when attempting to enter IH-10 from Silver City area.
Deming and Lordsburg have all those salt flats and that's what makes it so bad over there. I always refer to windy days as breathing Arizona.
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