Mike,
Here’s an interesting factoid about Boulder weather–90 mph winds in December and January are surprisingly common.
The attached picture shows a bar chart of occurence of winds in a recent 35 year period (1967-2002). In the months of December and January, there have been 41 90-mph “Chinooks” in Boulder. Chinooks are warm, fast, steady winds from the west, usually after a snowfall. I had no idea there were so many of them. On our drives out there this coming December and January, we may have to batten down the hatches pretty tight. We’ll be driving into the wind, anyway, so we should be able to watch the flying tumbleweeds and two-by-fours as they come towards us.
–rakkity
What a symmetrical graph! Sure looks like something regular’s going on (and it suggests one not fly into Denver in December … ).
I’ve flown in and out of Denver in December or January a lot–at least a dozen times–and never even noticed any problem. But these chinooks last only 5-10 hours, so if there is one every year between (say) Dec 1 and Jan 31,
you have only 1 chance in about 150 or 300 of encountering one while landing. But that is definitely a non-zero chance, so just what do airplane pilots flying into Denver do when a chinook is passing through? Call for a belay by the ground troops? Land in Kansas?
But I read that chart to say an average of 20 per month in December … If one posits an average duration of 7.5 hours, that’s a 1 in 5 chance, no … ? Possibly more if they coincide more with daytime, the more likely flying times.
Ooops. That’s total, not average …
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