Thinking back to my traditional aviation weather courses, I realized they didn’t address intense wind events where the agency of high wind all by itself wreaks its own special form of havoc. This year there were numerous high wind events — several haboobs in Arizona, a derecho in the Midwest, and wind-driven fires in California, Oregon, Colorado and then California again. There were also unusual wind storms that caused major dust storms, flipped airplanes and uprooted trees in Washington, Idaho and Utah. They destroyed billions of dollars in property.
Anomalous and novel wind events happen, but extreme wind events induced by the added energy from a warming atmosphere are beginning to seem like the new normal. Whether or not you agree with that view, you would probably agree that wind storms demand their own risk management considerations.
