Читать книгу Weather For Dummies - John D. Cox - Страница 35

Winds have a lot to do with how storms come and go (Chapter 5 goes into detail), but the weather forecast concerns itself mainly with the wind in your face. A forecaster describes what is expected of the wind’s direction and its speed.

Wind direction describes where the wind is blowing from. And so a north wind is coming out of the north and blowing toward the south. You get the idea. Weather forecasts commonly describe the direction of winds on an eight-point compass: north, northeast, east, southeast, and so on.

Winds that blow only up to 5 miles per hour are generally described as light, or light and variable, to indicate that they are kind of wafting around in different directions. Winds 15 to 25 miles per hour sometimes are described as breezy when it’s mild weather or brisk when it’s cold. The word for 20 to 30 miles per hour is usually plain windy, at 30 to 40 miles per hour they are very windy, and winds blowing 40 miles per hour or greater can be described as strong, damaging, dangerous, or high. Winds become “hurricane force” at 74 miles per hour, but they are dangerous well before then. (Stay out of them!)