It's Still Blowing!

It's still blowing outside. This wind event is pretty persistent. A snapshot from the MesoWest map interface shows how persistent this windstorm has been. Over the last 24 hours, the max gust has been 67 mph at the UDOT portable weather station. This location in Farmington has continually measured the strongest winds of this windstorm.

MesoWest.Utah.edu

It was a bit windy around noon in Spanish Fork. Winds were generally from the east, suggesting this is part of the downslope wind. However, the strength of these winds was not nearly the same as the winds north of Salt Lake. Below shows data from my weather station. It's hard to see an east wind from my station because it is blocked by a house. Still, we peaked at a gust of 19 mph with moderate sustained winds that aren't too unusual.

MesoWest.Utah.edu

Another CWOP station not far from mine isn't blocked by a house on the east side, so it measured some higher gusts, shown below. Again, the east, northeast wind was persistent most of the day, but stronger gusts were measured.

MesoWest.Utah.edu

Seeing more indicators of the downslope windstorm in Spanish Fork suggests the low pressure to our south is moving. (By the way, that low pressure to our south is causing some weather related problems for New Mexico--snow! See the news store here.)

I wish I had my camera, because I saw a beautiful example of what a rain shadow looks like from the lee side of a mountain. Driving towards Provo, I could see Mount Timpanogos. The wind was blowing from the east. There were lots of clouds on the backside of the mountain. Just above the mountain crest was a thick lenticular shaped cloud. As the winds blew over the mountain and spilled over the the west side, the clouds dissipated. It was beautiful!  I did find some pictures of Mt. Timp. from the BYU webcam. This isn't exactly what I saw, but here are two pictures that sandwiched the time I was looking at the mountain this afternoon. The first image was taken November 23, 2013 at 12:09 pm, and the second was taken at 1:49 pm on the same day.