How Wind Works

Beloved egghead Buckminster Fuller said the wind doesn’t blow, it sucks. And he was pretty much right, depending on your perspective. Find out how everything from the hurricane to summer breeze makes life on Earth possible.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
stuff you should know. Get another edition of our never
ending Please don't ever let it in um Earth Science Week.

(00:26):
That's right? Uh? Can I tell you a quick story?
Have added you edged? I know, actually considered what I
should say. The astute listener with it heard you go
before he said yes, hopefully Jerry can edit them. Uh. So,
I think I may have talked about this before, but

(00:47):
I had aims at one point, and not like the
most passionate aims. But I thought about being a meteorologist
for a little while in college because I was headed
toward a journalism may juror. And I think I mentioned
before my best friend from high school, the the map
illustrator today Ra. We we sit around and watch the

(01:08):
Weather Channel, largely due to Rad's influence, and I just
always thought it was cool. I took a meteorology class
in college and it kicked the poopoo out of my body. Yeah.
I had a similar experience with astronomy. Yeah, so I
knew what, like you wanted to be an astronomer and
then you're like, this is too hard. I thought it

(01:29):
was gonna be like, look at this star, this is
pretty awesome. And then like the first day, like the
sigma like signs shows up, I'm like, I don't know
what to do with this. So I think, I think
I get where you're coming from. Yeah, so that kind
of dashed my dreams of being a meteorologist, because you know,
I mean we I think people can teach themselves things,

(01:49):
and like, part of the hard part of our job
is to teach ourselves something really like that. People go
to school for four years to study, and I think
you can sort of teach yourself stuff. But unless there's
a you have just a fundamental, weird innate understanding of
that stuff, it's just really challenging. Like if you're not
a math person, you can learn math, but not like

(02:11):
someone who just really gets numbers. Sure, Yeah, definitely makes
sense totally. And I'm not sure we've ever really by we,
I mean humanity, have put our finger on what that
distinction is that it'd be interesting to know what some
of the hypotheses are. Maybe we should do a podcast
on it. Yeah, that'd be good. So anyway, that's a

(02:31):
long winded way, long winded way of sort of saying,
you know, I did this over and over and studied
wind of the past couple of days, and I I
kind of get it enough for this show. But but
I'm not going to be a meteorologist for a very
good reason. Yeah, I'm with you. Um, I've got it
just enough. That feels like there's a massive opening on

(02:53):
the side of my head and everything I know about
when could just fall right out at any moment. But
it's in there for now, keep it shut for the
next forty But I'm trying. I've got my hand cover.
It's really gooey in there. It's more complex than you
would think, but some parts are easier as well. Yeah,
And I mean, like, even if you're talking about wind, um,
you can kind of break down what what wind is

(03:17):
and what causes wind and what creates wind um into
basically three different things. The first one is heat, which
we'll get into. Another one is pressure differences we'll get
into that as well, and then the rotation of the planet,
which we will get into in this episode. But yeah,
that's it gets a little tricky. Yes, agreed, Totally agreed, Um,

(03:39):
And I say, we just dive in and we start
with pressure differences creating wind, because I think it's the
simplest thing to understand, and I think once you have
pressure differences down, you can move on to the heat part. Yeah.
I mean this was this the grab stir Did he
help us with this one? Yes? And I have to
say the grab shirt did an amazing job angling this info. Yeah. No,
hats off to him. Is you know ed out? I

(04:01):
think ed always has a knack of uh delivering a
metaphorical type example that really hits home. And with pressure
he uses just a balloon filled with air where you
have high pressure and low pressure, and when you take
your fingers off the tip of that balloon, all that changes.
Because what wind is really always trying to do on

(04:23):
planet Earth is equalize and reach some sort of equilibrium.
And that's basically what's happening with wind. As you have
high pressure, which is you know, technically more air, and
that's gonna go flow away from itself because it wants
to equalize, and then it's gonna where there's less air,
the surrounding area is gonna flow towards the lower area.

(04:45):
So as it relates to wind, there's basically more wind
and the winds are faster when those two disparities are
the greatest. Yeah, if you get a parcel of air um,
which is just a kind of a stable mass of
air as far as meteorologist at concerned, that's really high pressure,
and you get on this really low pressure that along
the edges of those two places, there's gonna be much

(05:07):
higher wind than if they're a lot closer between high
and low. If they're closer to the same And so
that's I mean, that's wind right there. Um, it just
changes in differences in pressure. Different parcels of air coming
up against one another and saying I'm gonna fill you up,
and then the other one says, fill me up. And
that's the filling up. Is the wind the movement of

(05:29):
the air. Yeah, so pretty easy, I think. So Yeah,
it's just where does those where do those um differences
of pressure come from? Are you? Are you asking me? Yeah, Well,
they come from the well, the heat is a big
source where all this comes from. Which and you kind

(05:51):
of well, I thought you hinted, but then we did
a different take and you've rescinded that hint. But the
sun when it heats the earth it heats the surfaces
of the Earth. It doesn't really heat the air so
much as it heats the surfaces whether it's water or
land or like asphalt or sand or green grass, and

(06:11):
they all have different temperatures, and that disparity is kind
of the key to it all because that's going to
reflect back up and that's kind of what heats the air,
is the reflection of that sun onto these various temperatured
surfaces or not temperature, but I guess ability to soak
up that sun maybe, right, yeah, because it's not it's
not at all uniform. Like you said, all these different

(06:33):
kinds of materials found on the surface of Earth, like
absorbed heat differently and radiate heat differently. So that means
that the air above it that's getting heated by that
land is going to be different than a different parcel
of air like over water, right yeah. And so because
um heat has to do with pressure and typically is

(06:54):
associated with low pressure, UM heat warms air, makes it expand,
which makes it less dense, which means it starts to
float up away from the Earth's surface. And as it's
floating up away from the Earth's surface, because of that
um that equilibrium that air seeks areas of higher pressure

(07:16):
like move in to fill that vacuum that space that's
being left by that lower pressure parcel of air that's
floating up into space because it's warm, right, And this
is that circular it's called convection. Like you've ever bought
a or seen a bad infographic on a convection of
and it's it's bound to have like red pulsating circular

(07:38):
arrows right, kind of going up and then back down
again in a circle. And that's what it is. That's
all it is, is convection. It's the same thing remember
that visions cookware in the eighties that you could see through.
So if you ever watched a pot of water boil
in one of those things, that's convection as well. Like
those bubbles going up, the hottest ones start to float
and they're replaced by cooler stuff that in in its

(08:00):
place starts to get heated up and starts to float.
And so what you've got is basically like a circular
conveyor belt like a ferris wheel almost where the air
that's heated at the I think so too, especially if
we're talking about one of those ferrist wheels. Where the
little cabins spin all the way around on their own axis. Terrifying. Yeah,
so you've got a ferris wheel, and as the ferris

(08:22):
wheel goes up the warm air that becomes less dense,
and it rides to the top, and when it hits
the top, it's colder up there than it is at
the surface, so it starts to cool down. So it
comes back down the other side. And as it's coming
down because it's cooler, other air that replaced it before
is going up because it's gotten warmer in its place,
and it's just this constant moving ferris wheel. Like you said, convection,

(08:45):
that's convection rising and falling parcels of air in this case,
but it can also be you know, bubbles of air
and water for boiling, or pockets of air in your
convection of it or something. Right, So, now, everybody, we
talked a little bit about the Coriolis force or the
Coriolis effect before. I don't remember what it was in

(09:10):
I don't remember either, because we we definitely have talked
about multiple times about your sink or toilet drain. Right,
So here's what I understand. The part where I get
a little fuzzy is how as it relates to wind,
And I know that you've got that down, So I
think we should make a pretty good dance partners here
and two. But I do understand, like the Coriolis force

(09:35):
only affects objects that are moving around something that's rotating,
and in this case we're talking about the Earth. But
like it's it's very easy for me to understand that
if a plane takes off in Miami and tries to
fly to Seattle, it's not like by the time it
gets to Seattle, the Earth is going to be in
a different position. So Seattle is because it rotates, So

(09:56):
Seattle is going to be in a different place. So
when you look at the little map, it's not going
you can't fly in a straight line from Miami to Seattle.
You have to fly in a curve to meet up
with where Seattle is eventually going to be. Yeah, So
that all makes sense to me as it relates to wind.
It kind of even after reading this like eight times,
got a little still a little hazy. So the way
that I saw it described that makes the most sense

(10:18):
to me is that, um, the Earth being like a
sphere or kind of like a sphere, of shape. Um,
But every part of the planet rotating, making making a
full rotation in twenty four hours means that some parts
of the planet have a lot further distance to travel
than other parts of the planet. So the equator, equator, yeah,

(10:39):
the equator has to travel about forty kilometers in twenty
four hours, but as you go closer to the polls,
there's a lot further distance. I think it like, um,
like eighty nine degrees north latitude, right right below the
North Pole, it has to travel sixty nine miles in
twenty four hours. So no part of the Earth can

(11:00):
arrive before another part of the Earth within twenty four hours.
It just doesn't work like that. So some parts of
the Earth travel more slowly than others. Still, you you
got it so far, Okay. Now what I saw is
that if you fire, say like a cannon from the
equator towards the North Pole. When you're firing, I just

(11:22):
it's like one of those cannons that the cannonball is
filled with candy, so you're not it's not hostile at all.
It's a very fun cannon exactly. I think we just
invented a new great thing. Um. So when you shoot
that cannonball north towards the North Pole. You're shooting it
at the speeds that the cannon was already traveling, which

(11:44):
is something like a thousand miles an hour on the equator,
and as it gets further and further north, it's reaching
a part of the Earth that isn't moving as fast
as the equator. So that means that the cannonball actually
appears to curve to the right because it gets ahead
of the Earth as it's traveling. So that cannonball is
gonna land um east of your target of the North Pole.

(12:07):
Got it? Yeah, But see what's confusing me now is
the thing that you set me that said to explain
it best was from a surfing website and it had
to do with Spanish roundabouts. Okay, that's another way to
put it to you. So we have well, we haven't
quite reached that. We haven't quite reached that. I have
one more part of the cannonball to say. If you're

(12:28):
at the polls and you're you shoot a cannon toward
um the equator, you're shooting it from a slower place
to a faster place, so the cannon is going to
curve behind your target to the west. Of the target,
But to you, the person firing the cannon, it's still
curved to the right. So no matter where you're firing

(12:49):
a cannon from, whether the equator or the poles, it's
going to curve the same way in the northern or
the southern hemisphere, to the right in the north, to
the left in the southern hemisphere. Now out we we
hit the roundabout part. Okay, are you do you want
to take that one? Well, I mean sure, it's it's
sort of common sense. If you drive on the right

(13:10):
hand side of the road and you enter a round about,
you're gonna be going counterclockwise around it, and if you
drive on the left hand side of the road, it
will be the opposite. Is it. Is it really that simple? Yes?
It depends on which way the air is moving. So
if you're talking about around about do you remember our
episode we just did the short stuff on the direction

(13:33):
humans tend to travel. Yeah, yeah, right, if you're certain countries,
and we talked about how if you're entering a circle
and you go to the right, you you end up
going counter clockwise. But if you're in the circle and
you go to the right, you end up going clockwise. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay,

(13:54):
the same thing happens. So if you have a high
pressure system, air is flowing away from it, so that
air is coming out of the circle. But any direction
that that air is going, say in the northern hemisphere,
it's going to veer to the right. But since it's
coming outside of the circle, that means that all of
that air eventually is getting spun into a clockwise direction. Yeah.

(14:19):
If it's going into that parcel of air, that circle
of air, because it's low pressure, everything's coming into it
at a right hand angle, which means that the spin
of the air is counter clockwise. I love it. I
think it's really interesting. I was watching, as always, a
lot of kids science videos to learn this stuff, and

(14:40):
one of them had a sort of a map of
the hurricanes of the world and as far as like
the directionality, using just little lines and arrows, and it's
just fascinating to look at the band of the equator.
I don't know how wide of an area that is
that deflects it, but there are no hurricanes at the
equator or within that certain band of width around the equator,

(15:02):
and it's it's just cool to look at, you know,
above and below the equator. How these hurricanes approach it
and then almost are like no, no, no, no, thank
you and go and just take a turn. Yeah, they
get deflected by the air, the convection currents. They're right. Yeah,
it's really fascinating. I think it's fascinating too, And I
say we take a break and come back and talk
more about wind of all things. Let's do it all, right, Chuck.

(15:57):
So you're talking about how that that um, the movement,
that convection of air combined with the Coriolis effect creates
cyclones and hurricanes, depending on what hemisphere you're in in
the world, right, m hm um. It also like that
a cyclone or hurricane is a really tight weather system.
They're rarely that tight. They're usually much more spread out

(16:20):
and much looser, but generally the same thing. And because
of those two things, the convection currents and the Coriolis effect,
that means that air spreads around the world. It travels
around the world. If we didn't have a rotating planet,
we would just have a convection current that went from
the equator to the pulse, the equator to the pulse,
and that's it. But because of that Coreolis effect, it

(16:41):
spreads around the world, right, and in as it kind
of spreads around the world, it's also kind of staying
within a certain number of latitude and forms these large
giant cells, so that each band of latitude around the
world generally has its own weather. Yeah. I mean this

(17:02):
part is really cool and it it makes perfect sense.
You know, the equator is where it's going to to
be warmest on planet Earth, and as the air is
you know, reflected back up with the Coriolis effect and
it goes further north, it's going to start cooling down.
And they've basically figured out at about thirty degrees latitude

(17:22):
it will have cooled down enough at that point to
finally descend again. But when it's descending again, it's always
seeking that equal equilibrium. So it's gonna be pulled back
towards the equator again by the low pressure caused by
heating and rising to begin with. So again it's that
convection cycle. But they figured out that it's about thirty
degrees where that temperature change finally is enough for that

(17:46):
to happen again. Yeah, And so because of the Coriolis effect,
you have high atmosphere winds traveling from west to east
and then when they descend, they come back down from
uh east to west. In those form the trade winds.
In this giant cell that's called a Hadley cell, which
is between the equator and like you said, about thirty

(18:06):
degrees north latitude. That's one or two of those. Yes,
there's one in the north and there's one in the south.
And then around around the poles there are two other cells,
appropriately called polar cells. And because it's so cold, the
equator has its cells because it's so hot. The poles
have their cells because they're so cold that any difference
in temperature is like a radical difference in temperature. So

(18:29):
they have their own convection currents that operate at the
poles as well. That's right, Uh. And like you said,
that's the polar cell that hits it about sixty degrees
and it's just too too basically uh, temperatures of convection
happening on both sides of the Earth. And then in

(18:50):
between you've got what's called the feral cell and the
R R E L And this is between thirty and
sixty degrees obviously roughly, and right here, you know, the
heat differential isn't that much. It's not the you know,
super super cold or super super hot, so you're not
going to get as much like radical convection going on.
And most of the movement there is caused by the

(19:13):
Hadley cell below it and the polar cell above it,
sort of knocking it about in between. Yeah, which is
really cool because that means that the friction from the
Hadley cell below and the polar cell above it are
actually spinning the air in the Ferreal cell. And because
the polar cell and the and yeah, and the Hadley

(19:34):
cell are both spinning counter clockwise, they're like gears turning
a cog, and that cog is the Ferrell cell. And
because they're both spin encounter clockwise, they spin the Ferreal
cell clockwise. That's right. That's just so not so amazing
to me that this is happening at all times on
planet Earth. Yes, And because of the tilt of the

(19:58):
Earth on its axis as it rotates, which gives us
the seasons, the different different strengths and um amounts of
this kind of movement of air, and where they are
within that band of latitude that they exist in changes
over the course of a year, which gives us different
kinds of weather on different parts of the Earth over

(20:19):
different times of the year, that's right, and all of
this stuff going on, all of these the Haley cells,
the polar cells, and the feral cells all interacting with
the Coriolis force that we talked about and that you
wonderfully explained with candy cannons and all these different pressure
gradients that we explained at the beginning. All of this
stuff together causes the jet streams. Uh, if you've ever

(20:42):
flown there's an airplane, you know, and they say we
can we can make up some time if we fly
a little higher, or you know, if we're going you know,
east to west or west to east, things are gonna
like your speed is going to be different because of
these jet streams. They're super powerful and very focused in
bands a few hundred miles wide that just wrap around

(21:03):
the planet. And the polar jet stream that's that's the money.
When that's where you're really going to be able to
like utilize an airplane's efficiency at its maximum. The subtropical
jet stream isn't as powerful, so it doesn't get as
much pressed, but the polar jet stream can go like
two miles an hour, and that's when you know, when
you fly up in that thing. That's when you're it's

(21:24):
like walking on a moving sidewalk in an airport, Yeah,
but one that goes two hundred miles an hour. So
hang onto your hats, right, So you're still walking, but
you're getting that extra boost exactly. Um. And the reason
the jet stream is so powerful up north, the polar
jet stream is because the difference in temperature between the
Polar cell and the Ferrel cell is much different. It's

(21:45):
much greater than the difference in temperature between the Hadley
cell just above the equator and the Ferrell cell. Between
the Polar and the Hadley cells right right, And because
of that temperature gradient, there's density differences. So air moves
really really fast, and it wants to go from the north,
from the poles toward the Ferreal cell into the mid latitudes,

(22:09):
but it can't. It can't go all the way down
because the pull of the Coriolis effect is such that
it stretches it out into a stream, and it's a
messy stream. It's not like a clear, easy going stream,
and it changes from point to point around the Earth,
and depending on the time of the year and even
time of the day. I would imagine, but it stretches

(22:30):
it out, and sometimes when the the difference in temperature
is so extreme, the jet stream can actually come down
further south. And that's what happens. Remember when we get
a polar vortex every once in a while, that's the
northern polar cell extending like so powerfully into the United States,

(22:51):
into the heart of the feral cell where most of
us in the US live. Right. I just think that's
fascinating And if you want us see that like in action,
there's a really cool video called NASA Satellite Sees Polar
Vortex on the move and it it's I guess satellite
imagery um of the moving polar cell as it creates

(23:14):
a polar vortex. It's pretty cool and it kind of
gets across, like I said, just how messy the jet
stream can be. No, it's awesome. Uh this, you know,
I think it's pretty cool. Ed points out that it
was really World War Two where we saw where we
really started to understand the benefits of the jet stream
because there were just so many more planes than ever before.
People are like, wait a minute, there's this, Uh, there's

(23:36):
a jet stream up there, and we can really use
this to save time and fuel and money and get
advantage on our enemies, perhaps because we're moving faster. And
even though in the eighteen hundreds they you might see
volcanic smoke like hundreds and hundreds of miles away, thousands
of miles because it got caught in the jet stream
and like they recognized this, but there weren't planes, so

(23:56):
they didn't really understand, Like it didn't really matter based
to cly because we're here on Earth. Who cares? Yes,
So what we've been talking about so far, Chuck, Like
the jet stream, uh is a it's a very high
altitude parcel of air or movement of air stream of air.
I guess I'll just go ahead and call it that.
But there's other things that also like affect um wind

(24:19):
as well, and it has to do with the differential
between um the land and the sea, and then also
the topography of the land as well. Yeah, so if
you've ever gone to the beach at all, you know
that it's cooler near the beach and near the ocean
than it is inland. If you ever lived in Los Angeles.
I think Matt Graining had a very funny quote years ago.

(24:39):
Someone interviewed him, what do they say they said something like,
if you could give advice to anyone about living in
Los Angeles, what would it be. And he said, I
think he always said was it's cooler near the ocean
than it is inland. Something some very kind of funny
quip about that. But it's it's true. Know when you

(25:00):
when you drive towards the beach in l A just
gets the air gets cleaner and cooler, and it's like
someone flicked on the air conditioner generally. And that's because
those uh temperature differences that we talked about of water
and land, Like the sun is heating this stuff up.
It's heating up all that inland, asphalt and everything else,
even the ground and the grass, and it's heating the
water uh differently, and the air goo that air goes

(25:24):
not right, is it? Therefore first while oh I never
gets out like that, So airswile. The reflection, the reflected
heat is going to be different over the water than
over the land, and the land is obviously going to
be warmer, so the air above it is warmer. That
air is gonna rise and create a low pressure system
and it's gonna pull that cooler air from the water

(25:46):
back toward the land and if you're on the beach
or near the beach, you're just getting the benefit of
that cooler air being builled in. Yeah, and if that
didn't happen, that Frank Sinatra song Summer Wind would not exist.
Even more importantly, there would not be one of the
greatest endings to any Simpson ever. Speaking of Matt Greening
the end of the Bart of Darkness one where Bart

(26:08):
breaks his leg and ends up doing a spoof of
rear window and the Simpsons get a pool. Uh, and
Martin Prince gets a pool to compete and he wants
to be popular too, but his pool bursts and somebody
I think Nelson monts pants is him and he just
stands there singing Summer Wind at the very end with
his pants pulled down around his ankle. I don't remember that.

(26:29):
It's it's as good as that episodes, just fantastic. That's
where mill Pool came from its top notch. I love
that song too, It's so great. Yeah, So we need
to talk about mountains too, because you know, we talked
about ocean and how that kind of the ocean and
how that topography can change how wind acts. But mountains,
you know, simply get in the way of wind. If

(26:52):
if you've ever been hiking, it's much windy or on
the top of a mountain because there's simply nothing in
the way, and that has a lot of weird effects
on how the wind travels. Right. Yeah, Like, um, if
there's like a gap in between mountains, it actually funnels
the wind together, which makes it much higher pressure because
it's just there's a lot more air in one smaller space. Um.

(27:12):
That can definitely affect wind speeds. And then also when
it hits the mountain, like you said, because the mountain
got in its way, it goes up and then comes
down the other side, and on the other side there's
all sorts of weird turbulence that is really hard to
plan for, which is apparently why um, flying in and
out of Las Vegas can be a difficult takeoff or
landing because of that turbulence from I think wind coming

(27:34):
from the west to the east. Yeah. I feel like
there's been a lot of movies where like a helicopter
crash has happened in real life range Yeah, movies based
on real things probably exactly. Um, So you want to
take a break, chuck, and then talk about all the
things that wind does for us. Yeah, win does a

(27:54):
lot of things, all right, So we're going to talk

(28:28):
about what wind does. What good are you wind? Um? Well,
if you like weather, you can thank wind because wind
basically creates the weather that we feel as humans walking
around on planet Earth. It's gonna pick up moisture and
then drop that moisture again and give us beautiful, cleansing rain.
It's gonna affect the temperature because like we said, it's moving, uh,

(28:50):
air of different different temperatures all over the Earth, and
that air is going to change the temperature where you're standing. Yeah.
I mean it's weird you think about weather. It's just
wind plus water mixed together in different interesting ways. But
that's it. Oh I thought that was the definition of comedy.
Oh no, wait, that's tragedy plus time. Yeah. Yeah, man,
you just busted my brain. Wind plus water not the same.

(29:15):
So um, depending on where you are um on the Earth. Uh,
there it can be windier than other places. And in fact,
I think for for a long time, for a good
seventy years, maybe eighty. Um. The highest wind speed record
ever recorded was on top of a mountain in New Hampshire. Um.

(29:36):
It was exactly Mount Washington part of the Presidential Mountains.
It turns out, get this, there's like President Jefferson, President Washington,
and then President Eisenhower. The mountains. Yeah, that's the name
of the mountains in this Presidential Mountain range. I just
think that one sticks out a little bit so UM
on this mountain they recorded uh wind speed of two

(30:00):
d and thirty one and that stood all the way
until I think two thousand eleven when it was finally confirmed.
That's something that had happened years before in Australia. Um
uh knocked the Mount Washington record off of the top
of the peak. I guess as it were. Yeah, I

(30:21):
think this was in ninety six is when it actually happened.
There was a two hundred and fifty three mile in
our gust. But this was the interesting thing here is
this was during a tropical cyclone. It was named Olivia
at Barrow Island, Australia, and I think, like you mentioned,
it was only confirmed in But the interesting thing is

(30:41):
it's the Mountain Washington. This was not a hurricane happening
obviously in uh Mountain Washington, New Hampshire. This was just
a massive pressure gradient and multiple storm sort of sort
of like the perfect storm crashing into one another. And
then obviously you know out Washington that we are were
already talked about the wind being greater at the top

(31:03):
of a mountain, but usually like you would expect a
wind record to be during a hurricane, and that wasn't
the case. No, But also I've read that the jet
stream dips frequently near Mount Washington, and so it had
the advantage of the jet stream adding in there too.
Apparently they build themselves as the world's worst the place

(31:23):
with the world's worst weather, like they have hurricane forced winds, Yeah,
like a hundred days of the year, and they are
definitely hanging onto their there um, their their status as
much as they can. I think in tornadoes we should
point out don't count because you can. You know, there
have been three hundred plus smile in our winds during tornadoes,

(31:45):
and they those are just separate records. Yeah. And then actually,
like we measure wind speeds from things like cyclones and
hurricanes certain ways. So there's a scale called the seth
Here Simpson scale, which I'm sure we talked about in
a Hurricanes episode, but that ranges for category one to
category five, and they based it on wind speed and
potential for for damage. And then for tornadoes, there's a

(32:06):
scale that also has to do with damage, like how
destructive the tornado was. It's the enhanced Fujita scale, and
it goes from zero to five. I think we talked
about that in or What's What's What's it like inside
a tornado episode? Yeah, because one one person survived it
and told their story and everyone's been writing that story
since then. That's exactly right, all right. We can go

(32:29):
through some of the more things that wind does because
it's pretty remarkable. It didn't just give us weather. Uh.
If you've ever been to the beach and looked at
waves and thought they were kind of cool, you can
think the wind for that. Uh. And we're not talking about, obviously, uh,
like under the surface of the ocean where tidal forces
are at work. We're talking about winds blowing across the

(32:50):
surface of the ocean and literally pushing ocean water in uh,
circulating this water and what's called a gyre, which can
move you know, it could be great, can move nutrients
and and stuff like that and help marine mammals with
their migration patterns and stuff like our marine animals with
their migration, but can also move around great garbage patches,

(33:11):
as we've talked about in the Best Yeah, we did
an episode on that too. Um Ed uses this example
of how water can actually pile up, which is just
so fascinating to me. When wind is strong enough and
um and persistent enough, it can actually push water so
that like the either end of a lake like Lake

(33:34):
Erie can have a difference in in um surface level
of like fifteen feet, Like it's just all the water
happens to be on the east end at that time
because the wind, these seasonal winds pushed it down that way.
That's just nuts, Like I always think waters level, it's
just always what level. Nope, our friend wind makes it
not so. Yeah, And I think Lake Erie is even

(33:57):
a standout and that it's at one end and it's
called it's a phenomenon called a sage. But from what
I read I looked up on stage is a little more.
I think that's usually water piled up higher at both
ends and it's lower in the middle. It's like less
oscillation in the middle. Like most they kind of likened
it to a seesaw, Like if you look at the
center of a seesaw, it doesn't you know, it's not

(34:19):
moving as much as both ends are. But I guess
in Lake Erie it just that wind goes one direction
and it's just stacking up there, yeah side and um
the planet tilts a little bit when it gets too
piled up on one side of Lake Erie? Does it really?
I don't think so. Maybe, but probably not in any

(34:40):
way we're equipped to detect. At this point. You can
really take advantage of how little I understand all this
just by saying things like that for the series. All right,
good to know. I wish you would have told me
that at the outside of that. Yeah, you could just
make fun of me this whole time. Another thing wind
does is help spread plants far and wide across this
earth because a bunch of plane it's have evolved to

(35:01):
disperse their seeds by hitching a ride on the wind.
Huh sure, I mean some plants, A lot of plants
are built to do just that, whether it's the way
there where they're shaped. Like you know, if you think
about a little uh, a little dandelion, and you talk
about something that was made to move with the wind,
what are those whirly gigs, the helicopters, what what tree

(35:24):
is that. Are they maples that do that? I don't know, man,
I always call them helicopters. Yeah, but it's like, um,
it's almost like a more like a close hanger, like
the old fat wooden ones with a seed in each
and to balance it out, and it just spins down. Yeah,
like a helicopter rotor. And I mean like they were
all over when I was a kid. But I cannot,

(35:45):
for the life of me remember what tree they came
out of. Yeah, and I don't think I feel like
I see them like I used to. Huh. I wonder
some species has gone extinct. No, someone will let us
know what it is. I'm sure they're everywhere, but that
was certainly made to move on the wind. Um Ed's
pointed out something I had no idea. It's kind of
a cool little factoid, which is when you go out

(36:06):
west and see first of all, when you see your
first legit tumbleweed. It's kind of a nice moment because
it just seems like something from the movies. But when
you see it, you're like, oh, wait a minute, that's
that's a real thing that happens. There are tumbleweeds out west. Um,
they're dropping seeds all along the way thanks to wind. Yeah,
so there's the dispersal unit is what you call it. Stu. Uh.

(36:30):
It also carries dust for better for worse. Um. We
did an episode on desertification. We also did one on droughts,
and in both of those they think we talked about
the dust Bowl in the nineteen thirties where the middle
of the United States was turned to do a desert
because we didn't know what we were doing with soil
tilling until they do erosion terrible drought. It's some really

(36:50):
high winds that just basically blew all the soil westward,
I believe, and blew basically everyone who lived in Oklahoma
westward as well. Um to settle out in California. Um.
It can also over time, over long enough time where
down you know those same geological features that get in
its way. Huh sure, I mean the mountain uh uh.

(37:14):
The Apple Chians are smaller now than they used to be,
and that's because wind wind is just sort of a
roaded those over time. And they're still wonderful and great,
but there it's not like the Rocky Mountains out west. No,
but they're about four million years older than the Rocky
so give them here. But so as wing taketh away,

(37:34):
wind also giveth um. And they think actually because of
dust storms from North Africa from the Sahara being kicked
up and carried all the way across the Atlantic UM
which actually sometimes if it's good enough or strong enough,
can cut down on hurricane season rather dramatically because it

(37:55):
keeps UM type systems from forming. But they suspect that
possibly this dust, which is nutrient rich um, which made
land makes land in some part in South America, UM
may have contributed to the Amazon rainforest being so so lush.
That's amazing it is. And Chuck, what's causing that? When

(38:18):
that's right, But like you said, it can take it
the way. Wind can carry disease in that dust as well.
And they're also from Africa. They think there have been
some meningitis outbreaks around the world because of these harmontton
winds that have carried it with the dust. And I
guess the theory is that uh, dust particles are going

(38:41):
to carry a virus more effectively from person to person.
I know they've even talked about that with COVID. Yeah, yeah,
I remember that too. Like the reason my masks are
effective because I know At first there was a lot
of people going, oh, these particles are so small they
can get right through those mass. But the particles are
carried on droplets and the droplets don't get through the
same theory with the dust. Very nice. Thank you for

(39:03):
the COVID update two. It's been a little while. Yeah,
it's still out there everyone, Just in case you're wondering, Yeah,
hasn't gone anywhere. You've got anything else about wind one
of the coolest things on the planet. No, yeah, it does. Um,
if you want to know more about whin than just
start researching. Maybe you'll be a meteorologist. You can pick

(39:26):
up where Chuck left off. And since I said that,
it's time for listener mail pick up I left off,
which is to say, after one class made a cn
you gotta start somewhere. All right, This is I'm just
gonna say, this is a one of the nicest thank
you is that we've gotten in a long time, and
it just it's been a lot to me. So we're

(39:48):
reading it. Hey, guys want to write in and thank
you for putting the superb content out in the world
for people to enjoy. Appreciate that you're showing forms and educates,
but even more importantly to me, your opinions give me
perspective on my own thoughts and beliefs, and I often
find myself participating in introspection to check myself on outdated
ideas that haven't been challenged by my friends and peers.

(40:09):
You bring a modern, thoughtful approach to your outlooks on life,
and I can't tell you how helpful it is to
have that presented in a friendly and accessible way. It
takes work curating one's media and take nowadays to avoid negativity,
divisiveness and bias, and having a platform like stuff. You
should know that I trust to always put the best
foot forward we try to. My friend is immensely appreciated

(40:31):
the impact you both had on me and countless other
people help shape a healthier, happier and more inclusive generation.
For that, thank you hardly cuts it, I know, right man,
that was one of the best. Thank you If you're
ever in Austin the barbecue and the drinks around me,
and that is from our new best friend Tom tap
It gets even better. He offered barbecue and drinks for free,

(40:54):
chuck for free. You know not to do that, Tom,
but if we ever come, how about this. We ever
come back to Austin. Tom, you my friend and you're
plus one are on the guest list listed listed, Tom
just got listed. Just write write as an email from
that same thread Tom, to remind us and say, hey, buddy,

(41:15):
remember me you promised me free tickets. Yeah, and to
prove you are who you say you are. Tom. Well,
I mean, if someone wants to go through trouble getting
a fake idea that says Tom dappy, then I guess
that could probably work. I would not encourage that and says, hey,
I'm the guy, but my name is you know, Bobby Juniper,

(41:35):
damn top, damn top, gotta mixed up. I don't know
where Bobby Juniper came from. This hotel chicken name. That's
a great one. Uh. It suggests that you smell really nice,
you know. And all you need to do is make
that suggestion and people will take it and run with it.
And as far as they're concerned, you do smell nice.

(41:56):
If you want to be like Tom and send us
one of the greatest, nicest thank you ever, we would
sure appreciate that. But that's not the only reason you
have to have to write in. You can write in
for any reason. Whatever reason you write in for, you
can send it in an email to stuff Podcasts at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

(42:16):
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