Vertical atmospheric mixing – Part 2 (H. Michael Mogil, CCM, CBM, DMS)

H. Michael Mogil October 31, 2016October 31, 2016

A few weeks ago, I posted an article about vertical atmospheric mixing. The article focused on a single day (Oct. 10, 2016) in Portland, ME. In the article, I looked at both the variability of winds during a 24-hour period (day versus night) and also examined atmospheric soundings.

Today, I’d like to address a multi-day wind event in Florida, keying specifically on where I live, Naples (southwest coast). For the past four days, our area has been under a persistent east to northeast wind flow. A clockwise wind pattern around a large high-pressure system along the East coast (Fig. 1) has controlled this near-ground wind flow. For purposes of this article, I will leave out the sounding component, instead looking only at the day to night wind speed variability.

Note, please that both the Maine weather scenario and the one being explained here came to light by OBSERVING the weather that was taking place. Observation is a key part of the scientific method…and in my opinion, perhaps the most important.
Figs. 2, 3, 4 and 5 show the daily (8:00 p.m. E.D.T to 7:00 p.m. E.D.T) meteograms for Naples, FL (KAPF airport code) for Oct. 26 – 29, 2016. Fig. 6 summarizes the average wind speed for the day and night periods (hourly data only, 8:00 p.m. E.D.T. – 7:00 a.m. E.D.T. and 8:00 a.m. E.D.T. –

7:00 p.m. E.D.T.) for the four-day period. Fig. 6 also shows the average gusts (basically, the peak wind speed during the observational period; to have a gust, wind speed variability must be greater than 10 knots or 11.5 miles per hour) for the two twelve-hour periods. It is easy to see just how strongly the wind speed and gustiness changed between the day-night periods.

Simply stated, when all else is equal, wind speeds and gustiness during daylight hours will be greater than adjacent nighttime periods.

And, with the weather pattern across south Florida remaining in place, this “daytime windiness – nighttime calmer” wind pattern should continue, at least into mid-week.

Originally posted 10/31/16

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