Woah, the winds of March: A look back at Denver's winds so far this month
If you've found yourself thinking that it has been rather windy this March, you would not be wrong. This time of year, the winds in Colorado historically pick up, but this March has given us more than our fair share of windy days.
Because of Colorado's location and terrain, our winds in Spring tend to increase. The changing of the seasons brings fluctuations in our jet stream, with cold air masses coming down from Canada or warm air masses coming up from the South. These fronts bring downsloping winds that race over the mountains, bringing gusty conditions to the Front Range.
This chart presents the daily average wind speeds, along with a record of climatology (the line) and vector-averaged wind direction for Denver International Airport.
11 of the 24 days so far this March have been dominated by windier-than-normal conditions.
The average sustained wind speed during March is roughly 11.9 mph. This March the average wind speed has been 12.1. Not much higher than normal for sustained winds, however, we have seen several gusty days!
The wind gusts at the airport this March are not shown on this chart.
The Beaufort Wind scale further breaks this down, categorizing wind strength into 12 different categories.
We broke the days down into three different categories to illustrate peak wind gusts:
Breeze to gale winds are gusts between 19 to 31 mph.
Near gale winds are 32 to 38 mph gusts.
Gale winds + are 39 to 63 mph.
Most days in March have been dominated by at least a fresh breeze, with 7 days holding that title and 5 days have come with a strong breeze.
So far this month 10 days have come with gale force winds, gusts exceeding 39 mph. Most of those days dominated our week last week.
The strong wind gusts reported at the airport were back on March 3, where 58 mph winds were reported.
While this all just illustrates what happened at DIA this month, it has been windy across the state.
Several times throughout the month winds have gust more than 80 mph in places like Boulder.
For the next several days, high pressure will build over the region. That strong ridge will help ease our winds across the state heading into the rest of the week.
