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Is Dallas-Fort Worth more windy than Chicago? Curious Texas investigates

As the saying goes, if you don’t like the weather in Texas, wait 15 minutes. But the wind? Well, that’s a different story

A Plano reader and self-proclaimed weather geek reached out to Curious Texas with a question about our climate.

She asked: Why is it so windy in the Dallas-Fort Worth area? As a recent transplant, I feel like this is the windiest place I’ve ever lived!

Her question is part of Curious Texas, an ongoing project from The Dallas Morning News that invites you to join in our reporting process. The idea is simple: You have questions, and our journalists are trained to track down answers.

Our Plano reader asked to remain anonymous, but she did offer some background info. She’s a recent retiree from the not-so-windy state of Maryland and has lived in Dallas for two years.

"It has struck me often just how windy this place can be," she wrote via email. "The weather here is very hard to get a handle on."

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Pedestrians at Lamar and Elm streets in downtown Dallas fight against the wind as a storm...
Pedestrians at Lamar and Elm streets in downtown Dallas fight against the wind as a storm moves in during October 2014. (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)
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Right you are, Plano reader. As the saying goes, if you don’t like the weather in Texas, wait 15 minutes. But the wind? Well, that’s a different story. Depending on the month, the wind can be relentless.

As for why I’m the journalist who’s answering this question, let’s just say I have wind credentials.

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I was born and raised in Chicago, a.k.a the Windy City (though some say the moniker refers to politicians' hot air). There,  lakefront breezes froze my nostrils every winter. I moved to Dallas a year and a half ago from Casper, Wyo., which I called the "Windier City," where tumbleweeds zipped across the road faster than boulders in an Indiana Jones movie.

D-FW is windy, too. Let’s look at the stats, courtesy of the National Weather Service in Fort Worth.

To establish an extreme wind benchmark, we’re going to use Amarillo. Every year, it’s one of the windiest cities in America. Its average annual wind speed is 12.8 mph.

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D-FW's average annual wind speed is 10.5 mph, measured at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Shockingly, that number is windier than Chicago's 9.9. As for Washington Dulles International Airport, the area where our reader came from, it's 6.9 mph, which means she's right: This is definitely the windiest place she's ever lived.

Now that we know D-FW is indeed windy, the question still remains. Why?

Flat and unobstructed 

It has to do with our flat landscape. The area is part of the Great Plains, one of the windiest segments of the country, stretching from North Dakota to a large portion of Texas.

Wind is air moving from high pressure to low pressure. And the Great Plains just so happens to be a hot spot for low pressure systems. They rapidly form in this region when cold fronts or storm systems move west to east over the Rocky Mountains.

“The plains are so open, so flat and unobstructed,” said Ted Ryan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. “That means air is going to rush into that whole region when low pressure systems form.”

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Think of the Great Plains as a giant bathtub with multiple drains plugged with rubber stoppers. It doesn’t matter which stopper you pull, all of the water in the tub will rush toward that drain. It’s the same way with wind. If a low pressure system forms in North Dakota or Kansas, it will be gusty in D-FW.

“We forget about air a lot, but air is a fluid, just like an ocean,” Ryan said. “We think of ocean currents, and air is the same way. It’s also currents. We can’t see them, so to speak, but we can feel them if there’s wind.”

Our Plano reader explained that she sometimes has trouble opening her car door when the wind is forcing it shut. She can certainly feel those strong currents, enough that she wrote to Curious Texas.

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As for the timing of her question? Well, it wasn’t a coincidence that it happened in April.

A flag crew tries to control a giant Texas flag in windy conditions during opening day of...
A flag crew tries to control a giant Texas flag in windy conditions during opening day of the 2011 Spring Thoroughbred Season at Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie on April 14, 2010. (John F. Rhodes / The Dallas Morning News)

Constant wind

The windiest times of the year in D-FW are winter and spring. The area’s average annual wind speed is 11.5 mph from January to May; the highest month is April, which averages a blustery 12.2 mph.

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In fact, the windiest day so far this year happened on April 12, when D-FW averaged 24.4 mph, with a peak gust of 47.

The strongest winds in D-FW’s history are typically associated with storms. According to the National Weather Service, the highest wind gust on record for Dallas County is 115 mph at Addison Airport on June 12, 1996. The Garland/Rowlett tornado winds on Dec. 26, 2015, were estimated to have reached 170 to 180 mph.

For those who don’t like the constant wind tussling your hair, you’re in luck. The summer and fall months are the least windy periods in D-FW, with an average of 9.3 mph from July to October.

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That means when it’s 110 degrees outside and the oppressive heat is forcing you to stay inside, there's little wind in sight.

So embrace the wind while you can, D-FW. You might miss it soon.

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