Appendix

Table 8, below, lists the peak gusts for 14 locations in California, Oregon and Washington that occurred during the five principal wind-producing storms in the series. The fastest windspeed out of the series for each location is highlighted in bold. The day of occurrence is centered around the results at SeaTac--some locations may have seen peaks the day before or the day after. A fair number of these storms struck within a few hours of midnight, producing results on either side of the day at various locations, plus stations in California, due to their proximity, are often hit first by storms moving out of the southwest, and this can be a full 24 hours or more ahead of places far north, like Seattle. This chart had been created to show the kind of variance seen in peak gust speeds across the Pacific Northwest in specific storms. See the Appendix for November 1983 for furthur examples, and explanation, of the difficulty in depicting just what is the most powerful windstorm when comparing different events. Source: all wind data is from the National Climatic Data Center Climate Visualization Database, save the readings for Renton, which were from my own anemometer (+- 3% on personal wind records).

Location Peak Gust
Jan 1
Peak Gust
Jan 5-6
Peak Gust
Jan 10
Peak Gust
Jan 16-17
Peak Gust
Jan 18-19
California:          
San Francisco 16 mph 35 mph 23 mph 35 mph 28 mph
Eureka 30 mph 29 mph 43 mph 64 mph 29 mph
Oregon:          
Medford 14 mph 33 mph 24 mph 27 mph 15 mph
Eugene 29 mph 31 mph 27 mph 40 mph 31 mph
Salem 37 mph 39 mph 22 mph 38 mph 35 mph
Portland 28 mph 43 mph 26 mph 48 mph 43 mph
Astoria 54 mph 49 mph 46 mph 75 mph 73 mph
Pendleton 46 mph 44 mph 31 mph 39 mph 29 mph
Washington:          
Olympia 32 mph 33 mph 31 mph 58 mph 55 mph
Quillayute 33 mph 49 mph 38 mph 48 mph 45 mph
SeaTac 33 mph 44 mph 37 mph 50 mph 40 mph 
Renton (Pers. Gauge) 35 mph 47 mph 44 mph 52 mph 42 mph
Yakima 30 mph 31 mph 16 mph 46 mph 35 mph
Spokane 35 mph 41 mph 35 mph 56 mph 37 mph
           
Average Peak 32.3 mph 39.1 mph 31.6 mph 48.3 mph 38.4 mph 

Last Modified: February 26, 2003
Page Created: September 22, 2001

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