Wind reports: weather station records vs. ground

Not only are official winds recorded 10 m above ground, but they in very cleared out areas (not with trees and buildings blocking the wind).

Also, winds near the ground tend to follow a "log wind profile":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_wind_profile

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I'm guessing that the track wind reading is only the component of the wind velocity vector that is parallel to the home straight (since they only give a + or - as opposed to angle or something). The situation you're describing could be explained by the wind being nearly perpendicular to the home straight rather than effects from the stadium configuration, though most likely both are important.

Crimea River wrote:

Something that has come up in the epic Boston discussion is the possible disparity between weather station data and the actual conditions experienced on the ground. Curious, I checked the recorded wind readings for the ACC Championships in Durham, NC vs. local climate data from the nearby Raleigh-Durham airport. The result was interesting, to say the least.

The NOAA forecast for the day was for 15 mph winds. The recorded wind was an average of 5.9 mph with gusts of 17-22 mph.

For the ACC meet, dozens of track-level wind readings had a high of 1.8 m/s (4mph) which is still under the AVERAGE airport reading, and track data averaged under 1 m/s (<2mph) with many 0.0 readings during the jumps, or less than 20% of the recorded average for the time period.

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I see what you did there. You included the FORCAST of 15 mph winds, hoping that it would hide the actual recordings of 5.9 mph.... OK ....

So the average recorded winds at the airport were 5.9 miles an hour, and the inside the stadium at track level winds were 4 mph?

Is that it? You started a thread for that?

You mean the readings inside of this stadium weren't the same as those at the airport? Did you know that Wallace Wade Stadium also sits in a hole?

I didn't know that was possible.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=wallace+wade+stadium&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl

LOL

My example is simply to demonstrate how easy it is for ACTUAL wind-vector can EASILY differ on the ground by a factor of 4-5 (usually on the side of lowered velocity due to boundary-layer effects and actual blocking which is much more common than funneling/acceleration). Taking weather station reports as the definitive measure is dodgy at best, misleading at worst, unless of course the race is conducted on an elevated concourse AT the airport!