The winds sure do blow

Has it been a windy year where you live? It's been blowing hard here in central Iowa for a couple days now, but this whole late winter and spring has been breezy, punctuated by high winds and storms. I lived in central Kansas for a few years way back when, and this year Iowa seems a lot like the land of Oz, wind blowing for days on end and all through the night.

In Kansas and elsewhere in the plains states this week, very strong winds halted wheat harvesting. Farmers tell me that they've had trouble with spraying operations because of the constant blowing.

I asked Harvey Freese, Freese-Notis Weather, this morning about whether we've been experiencing an unusually windy year.

"Yes, it seems like we have experienced a number of powerful storms this spring," he said. "The blizzard in early March comes to mind right away. Heavy snows fell across western Iowa, the blizzard blew for days with wind gusts at or near 50 mph. Traffic statewide came to a standstill as the Interstates were closed due to the heavy snow and unrelenting wind."

"The next storm that comes to memory occurred in early April, strong cold winds blew across the Midwest bringing very cold subfreezing air into the midwest, which did much damage to budding fruit trees and otherwise hardy spring flowers such as daffodills in Iowa. Seems like the cold windy weather blew continuously for a number of days in the Deep South.

"The wind-driven cold was so unusual there were numerous just-planted fields of corn in parts of southern Missouri and Illionis where considerable freeze damage was occurred. Some say as much as 7% of the early planted crops were affected. In Kansas, jointing wheat was severely damaged in central Kansas because of the late cold snap, driven south by strong northerly winds.

"And now again, in early June, another very strong wind has been associated with an intense storm moving across the Dakotas. Overnight temperatures remained in the 70s and early this morning winds were gusting up to the mid 30s in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.

"Makes we wish I had a shares in a wind farm," Harvey concluded.