Questions about wind instruments

[Jim Cantore]

I call them Wind Instruments because I can never seem to spell animonitor correctly

First, At what wind speed will most of them fail?

Second, Whats the highest wind one can plausibly stand up to?

Third, How exactly do they fail? Do they get blown away? Does the fan fly off? Or something else?

[vbhoutex]

What speed they fail at is related to how well they are built and even more to how well they are mounted. Past that you would have to read the specs on each one to determine at what speeds they are "useful", and not expected to fail.

[Aslkahuna]

There are a variety of reasons for failure though most of the time in recent years we lose wind data from APOS (as I call it) due to a lack of power backup and data storage in case of data transmission failure. Often failure is due to debris hitting the sensor tower and destryoing the sensor or knocking it down (example, the sensor at the old NHC building failure after being hit by the Radome after recording a 164 mph gust). When the winds become extreme (over 100 mph) there is a tendency for the cups on a three cup anemometer or the propeller on an aerovane type sensor to come apart-especially if they are not designed for such winds. The Davis sensors seem to hold up well in this regard.

Steve

[Jim Cantore]

Thanks, good information.