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How can you tell the difference between different kinds of wind gusts?
AccuWeather
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3/17/2025
Straight-line winds cause far more damage during severe thunderstorms than tornadoes, but what exactly are the different types of winds that can happen? AccuWeather's Anna Azallion breaks them down.
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Transcript
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00:00
Well, with storms like we had over the weekend, sometimes when we're not talking about tornadoes,
00:06
we're talking about wind anywhere from what you were seeing on the left side of your screen
00:10
with the wind kind of ruffling the fur of the dog there to actual damage being done
00:15
to a roof and that flag really blowing in the wind.
00:17
Now, when we talk about severe weather, a lot of times we're talking about damaging
00:21
wind gusts and this being one of the likeliest risks that we will see.
00:25
But what exactly does that mean?
00:26
Well, you might also hear us call them straight line winds.
00:28
It's one in the same and damaging wind gusts or straight line wind damage, that's actually
00:33
more common than tornado damage and the speeds that we're talking about, 50 to 60 plus miles
00:39
per hour.
00:40
That's when we get into damaging wind categories, but you can actually kind of estimate wind
00:44
speeds just based on visual clues.
00:46
We'll go through a couple examples.
00:47
So first of all, we have just a light breeze, right?
00:50
That's when you're outside.
00:51
It's kind of a nice day.
00:52
Some leaves might be kind of ruffling in the wind, four to seven mile per hour winds, very
00:56
light.
00:57
And then another breeze is maybe when you have an umbrella and it's kind of difficult
01:01
to keep the umbrella working, right?
01:02
Like it might be flipping inside out, things like that.
01:05
That's when we get to 25 to 31 mile per hour winds.
01:08
Then gale force winds, for example, we often talk about with, you know, tropical storms
01:12
that are forming.
01:13
This is much stronger.
01:14
We're talking about 39 to 46 mile per hour winds and trees are going to be swaying.
01:19
Traffic lights might be blowing around as well.
01:21
Here's a couple more examples.
01:23
So a severe thunderstorm, there's actually criteria, right?
01:26
For a severe thunderstorm warning, winds have to be 58 miles per hour or greater.
01:31
You might see power lines swaying dangerously.
01:34
It can reduce visibility because of dust, rain or debris blowing around.
01:39
Then we get to destructive thunderstorms.
01:41
This is 80 mile per hour wind gusts or stronger.
01:44
And that's when we talk about large trees uprooted.
01:47
A category one hurricane, of course, is going to be bending trees.
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