[TowerTalk] Wind Gauges: Summary

[Guy Olinger, K2AV]

Another way to express your concern: what wind gauges hold up in
tornado/cat5 hurricane force winds? Actually, at my place, we're not
planning for 140+ mph. Might take down the tower, or trash a lot of
stuff on it, in addition to the wind vane.

That's the roll of the dice...will I catch a tornado...will a category
5 hurricane make it 200 miles inland at full force? Either of those,
my insurance will probably be replacing my house, all it's contents,
in addition to the tower, and the weather vane would be but one line
on a long list of damaged/ruined/missing goods. Additionally in such a
case, I hope I and mine lived through the blow to participate in the
rebuild. People get killed.

I suspect you were getting microbursts, unless you know you took on a
tornado.

A microburst collapsed a brick wall on top of a full school cafeteria
and killed eleven (?) children (upstate NY, 1988 or thereabouts).

I think you need a professional NWS rated device for those kinds of
winds. Prepare to spend money. Manufacturers engineering for the home,
consumer market will not add the beef (and the cost). It won't sell
broadly at the elevated price. Call the airport manager at the nearest
controlled airport and see what they use.

On Wed, 19 Jan 2000 10:59:47 -0700, you wrote:

>
>Which wind gauges hold up real good in high winds? We've had two at our site
>in Boulder and both have been destroyed in high winds. Both times the chart
>recorder indicated a pegged reading at 140MPH+ just before the time of
>destruction.
>
>--Dave
>K0QE
>
>	----------
>	

--.  .-..
73, Guy

Guy Olinger, K2AV
k2av@contesting.com
Apex, NC, USA

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