I need to grow an extensive windbreak/hedge to protect my new garden from the incessant prairie wind. The people from whom I lease the land and I have different opinions as to what the main wind direction is. They own the land for quite a while. I have been gardening only one season. But then the weather isn't anymore what it used to be either....

Since the windbreak will cost a fair bit of money and effort to establish, I want to make sure that is in the right place. I do not want an expensive high-tech gizmo - I did a search on www.google.com. A simple chart (analog record) is fully sufficient. Does anyone know of such an device and where to get it ?

-- Alex Eckardt (eckardtk@cadvision.com), August 24, 2001

Answers

I hope this helps, but it may not be too easy to get.

A book by John Rowlands, named "Cache Lake Country", published by Lyons and Burford, had a device the author made in the wilds for recording air speed. Being in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, he had to make do, but reported good results and was made on the spot. It was totally non electric and was calibrated using a vehicle with a speedometer; truly low tech stuff here. This might work for you. By the way, besides being well illustrated, the books has lots of how to stuff along with the device above. I enjoy the book immensely and would even be a good book for older children to read.

Hope this helps

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), August 24, 2001.

Why not just put up a wind sock or flag pole and note down on a calender on a daily basis what the wind did that day? Doesn't have to be anything fancy as far as flag pole, etc. Or you might want to go to an internet site like http://www.wunderground.com/ and put in your zip code. This will give you the weather local to you from a nearby observation point (county airport, etc.) and you can note down on the calender the same way. (I use this site with my zip code as my homepage, btw---I can never hear too much about the weather. :)

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), August 24, 2001.

Hi Alex, Our company does instrumentation systems for airports but I doubt you need anything that fancy. Do a web search for 'anemometer' or 'anemograph' and I am sure you will find fairly cheap instruments that use a PC for the recording etc. There is a clever sensor head that gives both wind direction and wind speed from the one sensor and is called the 'Rotorvane'

The suggestion of getting the information from a local airport or meteorological observatory is a good one, they will have records back to the time of the great flood and will be able to give you a good idea of that the real prevailing winds not just what you might experience over a few months or years. Ask for 'wind rose' for your area, this is diagram of radial lines where length of the line indicates wind strength and frequency for various compass heading.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), August 26, 2001.