Heavy Rainfall for Portions of the West and Central U.S.; Monitoring Fire Weather Conditions for New England

Tropical moisture continues to flow across portions of the Great Basin, desert Southwest and California. Isolated instances of flash flooding remains possible. Meanwhile, a storm and associated frontal boundary will focus showers and thunderstorms for the center of the nation. For New England, dry and breezy conditions could enhance favorable fire weather conditions. Read More >

April 2022 Windiest on Record!

You may have noticed that it was a bit windy across the High Plains during the month of April. Many have asked "How unusual was all the wind?' and we have looked through our available climatological data to try to answer this question. Due to the way wind measurements have changed over the years, long term wind records can be difficult to establish. Using a dataset going back to 1965 NWS Goodland looked at the following criteria:

Average Daily Wind Speed (records went back to 1984)

Number of Days With Wind Gust >= 50 mph (records back to 1975)

Number of Days With Peak Sustained Winds >= 30 mph (records back to 1965)

For all three of these categories, April 2022 ranked #1.

Average Daily Wind Speed	17.7 mph
Number of Days with Wind Gust >= 50 mph	10 days
Number of Days With Peak Sustained Winds >= 30 mph	18 days

The following tables show how April 2022 compare to previous years. The top 10 values are plotted and in the case of a tie all years that reached the value are included.

Top 10 April Average Wind Speeds

Number of Days With Peak Wind Gust >= 50 mph

Number of Days With Maximum Sustained Wind Greater Than 30 mph.

What makes April of 2022 even more impressive is that April is on average the windiest month of the year, with April, March and May being the months with the highest average wind speed. The following graph courtesy of the Iowa State Mesonet

-JRM

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