With those high winds expected across the region today into tomorrow, you’ll probably hear words like breeze, gale, or even storm force being thrown around, and those aren’t just dramatic forecast terms. They actually come from something called the Beaufort Wind Scale, which has been used to classify wind speeds since the early 1800s. For example, what’s officially called a “fresh breeze” comes in around 29 to 38 kilometres per hour. That’s enough to get small trees swaying and start lifting loose debris. Once you move into a “gale”, you’re talking about roughly 62 to 88 kilometres per hour, where twigs can snap off trees and it becomes genuinely difficult to walk into the wind. When forecasts start mentioning “storm force” winds, that’s in the neighbourhood of 89 to over 100 kilometres per hour, where trees can be uprooted and structural damage becomes possible. So when those gusts start howling later tonight, there’s actually a very real scientific threshold behind the name they’re given, it’s not just the weather network being dramatic.
Read up more about this by checking out this website below!
https://www.energyencyclopedia.com/en/renewable-energy/wind-energy/the-beaufort-wind-force-scale?
