The Wind of January 19, 2021

 Environment Canada issued a rare "Snow Squall" warning on January 19th, and it didn't disappoint.

How windy did it get?

This dashboard is a little cramped, but each little circle here is a gusty day at Blatchford and the International Airport. For January 19th Blatchford's maximum wind gusts were 87km/h, while the airport hit 107km/h. Both stations have had gustier days, but this was certainly in the upper range.

History of Gusty Days

Here we have the chronological history of all of the days with wind guts of at least 87km/h, and at the bottom is the wind timeline for January 19th.

In "recent" years Blatchford crossed the 100km/h mark, with gusts up to 102km/h on July 20, 2015. And the International hit 111km/h on August 15, 2015, and 106km/h on January 15, 2014.

The gustiest days at Blatchford hit 117km/h on June 6, 1960 and September 11, 1973. For the International it was 146km/h on October 1, 1965.

Environment Canada measures windspeeds each hour, and peak wind gusts each day. For January 19, 2021 the hourly windspeeds were around 15km/h for most of the day, but they picked up at around 7pm and spiked at 8pm. The International's highest hourly windspeed hit 63km/h at 8pm, while Blatchford reached 39km/h. It's very typical for the hourly windspeeds to be much lower than the peak wind gusts.

Looking Back to 2020

Here is a quick look back at 2020. 

In 2020 the airport had a lot of "windy" days, with 78 days with gusts of at least 50km/h. The windiest day was October 30th, with the airport gusting to 84km/h and Blatchford at 50km/h. And the International's highest hourly windspeed was 61km/h, with Blatchford only at 30km/h.

January 2021

And finally, here is a quick look at the winds for January 2021.

Compared to history, January 2021 hasn't been particularly windy. Aside from January 19th, the 13th also got a little windy with gusts up to 72km/h at the International and 55km/h at Blatchford.

For some reason, most of Edmonton's windiest months occured long, long ago in the 1960s and 1970s/ We talked about that in Wind in Edmonton Part 6: Windy Months.