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Old 01-13-2008, 03:09 PM
Skyway Scott
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I typed "average wind speed florida" into google search.
This came up number 1.

http://radar.meas.ncsu.edu/climatein...l/avgwind.html

It's just my opinion, but average wind speed is pretty useless.
Think of averaging the calories burnt per hour of two different people.

One guy runs 2 hours straight every day (only 2 of 24 hours though).
The other guy sits all day. The average calories burnt per hour (averaged over the day) for each aren't much different.

Wind tends to increase for short periods of time and then die off.
When you look at the wind averages for almost all cities in America, it gives the impression it never blows.
Also, compare March to August winds for Tampa, using that data. March averages less than 10 knots (2.5 knots more than August).
That's because it usually sea breezes for only 3 to 4 hours a shot. That leaves 20 hours of non wind to kill the average.

Just a thought. Hopefully that link helps.
I think it's the same as Jayson's, basically.

A useful stat, imo, would be how for long and how often the wind speed breaks a critical threshold value (maybe 15 knots) or a couple values (like plus 25, as well) and showing how many days per month that occurred for each category. Like this site did -

http://www.flagbeach.com/wind_stats.php

You might have luck tracing stuff like this on wind energy sites. Theoretically, they would really want to know about wind data.
Although, when it's gov't subsidized, who gives a rat's ass.... they will build the the wind fields anywhere and not probably not care.

Maybe people who are against wind energy in FL (I am not for windmines here) might be a good contact for wind stats (they better be) because that's how they can show how ridiculous the idea is.

Last edited by Skyway Scott; 01-13-2008 at 04:35 PM.
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