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In meteorology, prevailing wind in a region of the Earth's surface is a surface wind that blows predominantly from a particular direction. The dominant winds are the trends in direction of wind with the highest speed over a particular point on the Earth's surface at any given time. A region's prevailing and dominant winds are the result of ...
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The term originally derives from the early fourteenth century sense of trade (in late Middle English) still often meaning "path" or "track". [2] The Portuguese recognized the importance of the trade winds (then the volta do mar, meaning in Portuguese "turn of the sea" but also "return from the sea") in navigation in both the north and south Atlantic Ocean as early as the 15th century. [3]
Consequently, a wind blowing from the north has a wind direction referred to as 0° (360°); a wind blowing from the east has a wind direction referred to as 90°, etc. Weather forecasts typically give the direction of the wind along with its speed, for example a "northerly wind at 15 km/h" is a wind blowing from the north at a speed of 15 km/h ...
A wind rose is a diagram used by meteorologists to give a succinct view of how wind speed and direction are typically distributed at a particular location. Historically, wind roses were predecessors of the compass rose (also known as a wind rose), found on nautical charts , as there was no differentiation between a cardinal direction and the ...
The westerlies, anti-trades, [2] or prevailing westerlies, are prevailing winds from the west toward the east in the middle latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees latitude. They originate from the high-pressure areas in the horse latitudes (about 30 degrees) and trend towards the poles and steer extratropical cyclones in this general manner. [ 3 ]
A wind atlas contains data on the wind speed and wind direction in a region. [1] These data include maps , but also time series or frequency distributions . A climatological wind atlas covers hourly averages at a standard height (10 meters) over even longer periods (30 years) but depending on the application there are variations in averaging ...
The Santa Anas are katabatic winds (Greek for "flowing downhill") arising in higher altitudes and blowing down towards sea level. [7] The National Weather Service defines Santa Ana winds as "a weather condition [in southern California] in which strong, hot, dust-bearing winds descend to the Pacific Coast around Los Angeles from inland desert regions".