A question of wind

[ShakyBake]

Due to some confusion over a quiz tonight I wondered if a tone could clarify please:

If there is a South Westerly Wind, does that mean it is blowing from or to that direction?

It is interesting that you're calling me "brave" for explaining in a simple way how prevailing winds arise, I'm reading that as a veiled insult, but I don't know why you're trying to insist I'm incorrect. You're raising lots of conflating factors that affect other, transient, weather patterns. The prevailing winds are circumferentially constant, in other words you get them as a ring at all longitudes, and also roughly equal all year round (hence "prevailing"). It's a rotational dynamics effect (which is circumferentially constant and constant with time), not due to temperature or pressure gradients, which would obviously vary a lot with time and place.

I think maybe the kindest spin on it is you just missed that I said "prevailing".

(I have also studied meteorology and not in an aviation context. I would hazard a guess that in aviation you would not focus so much on the physical origin of prevailing winds, because small scale weather patterns would obviously be more significant when flying a plane. But I wouldn't have mentioned this if you hadn't used it as an appeal to authority as a substitute for an explanation...) and now I promise to stop responding to the needling and let op have her thread back

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned either the jet stream or the gulf stream, both of which have a considerable effect on weather for the British Isles.

From

🤣💨

You know you can leave him for any reason you want, don't you

Down the years I have given undue amounts of thought to this illogical and counter-intuitive convention of naming winds and pointing weather vanes in the opposite direction to that in which the winds travel.

I concluded that it derives from the very simplest means of determining wind direction: feeling it on your face. The face is sensitive enough to detect even light winds, and it is comparatively easy to swivel to and fro until the breeze feels full frontal and equal on both cheeks.

At which point the direction your nose is pointing gives you the name of the wind. Turns out it's naturally intuitive after all.

Just not to the indoor generations like myself.

For those (me included) who don't like having the wind in their face, you could lick your finger and hold it up in the air. You can feel the wind on one side of your finger then.