High Wind Reports

After a day of gusty winds at mostly 30 to 40 mph across southern Arizona, the sunset last evening was blurred by dust in the air. Here at the house, it was quite windy most of the day, with gusts I estimated up to around 35 mph and dust was sometimes blowing down the Rillito Wash. However, the most notable winds in southeast Arizona have been those reported at the Mt. Hopkins RAWS site. The data for this station indicate gusts of over 50 mph for most of the past 24-hours. The maximum winds reported during this period at Mt. Hopkins have been from the east at 61 mph with gusts to 75 mph. In comparison, the Atmo rooftop anemometer on campus has had a max gust of 54 mph during the past 24-hours.
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Map at top shows Mt. Hopkins (in the Santa Rita Mountains south-southeast of Tucson) and the higher Mt. Wrightson to the east-northeast. There is a terrain gap immediately to the east of Mt. Hopkins, just south of Mt. Wrightson. Photo at bottom shows the Santa Ritas looking east-southeast. Mt. Hopkins, with the square telescope structure on top, is in the foreground and Mt. Wrightson is to rear and left. Presumably, the very high winds at the Mt. Hopkins RAWS station (just below the telescope elevation) are due to local flow effects around Mt. Wrightson and through the terrain gap. This of course assumes that the anemometer at Mt. Hopkins is functioning properly.

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Finally, another interesting wind observation this morning, related to the intense cyclone in the Gulf of Alaska. The sounding (12 UTC 4 November 2010) at Annette Island, Alaska, indicates an 850 mb wind from the south-southeast of 91 kt. Quite impressive!