A Question

I was just looking at the wind farm that is located on the top of the West

Cochon Capitaliste...

Maui mountain top, and I wondered, does wind pick up speed when it hits the
side of a mountain?

Cochon Capitaliste...

Jerry you've been sitting in front of your computer too long. Walk or
drive up to the top of West Maui mountain top breath some fresh air
test the wind speed by letting it blow in your face, then come back and
tell us.

hlmw...

No, it picks up speed when it goes over the top of the mountain and
slides down the other side, gathering speed as it goes... we have
prevailing West winds here that blow down the eastern sides of the Rocky
Mountains to blast across the prairies... they are called Chinook Winds.
When we get a real blower, the warm wind that blows for several days
melts inches of snow down to bare ground. I have seen a temperature gain
of 28Fdeg to above freezing in a half an hour and conversely, when the
wind suddenly drops, skating rinks everywhere in the sudden freeze of
puddles and miniature lakes. Walking and driving can become treacherous.
These observations may not hold in the rest of the world where
topography/conditions are different, but is how it is in Southern
Alberta, Canada.
It has been said that if you were riding in a sleigh when the Chinook
wind kicks up, the front will be riding on snow and the back end kicking
up dust!

AndyS...

Generally , yes.... The wind is moving at a certain horizonal
speed. When it hits an obstruction, that tends to change
the direction, the horizontal speed (inertia) tries to remain
constant. This may give an increase in speed in the new direction...

An example is the airplane wing.... Wind hitting it from the front
is split into two directions.... One is under the wing, which is pretty
much still horizontal... The other is over the curved upper surface,
which has a longer path...

The higher speed on the longer path produces a pressure
drop which results in LIFT on the upper surface... The airplane
goes UP...

A few feet BEHIND the wind, the air stream recombines and
stabilizes...... Hence there is no tear in the fabric of space time,
or anything else....... A mile behind the airplane, you just can't
tell......

But, over the wing surfaces, a miracle happens.....

For a mountain, ALL of the horizontal air slides over the
'upper surface"...... If the wind were strong enough, the
mountain would lift into the sky.... This is what makes the
roofs of houses come off in a hurricane......

But you already knew that :>))))

Jerry Okamura...

No, I thought that would be the case, but I did not KNOW that to be the
case, so thank you for the information. So, then I gather, that a good
place to put up a wind farm, if not the best place to put a wind farm is on
the top of mountains (that is if you have mountains), as long as it is one
the upwind part of the mountain?

hlmw...

In this part of the world they put wind farms on the prairies or low,
ranges of undulating hills, never 'on' a mountain. See my reply about
Chinook winds.
Re the comment about the sounds of the windmills, there is so much space
here that no one ever hears them!
Interesting question and comments.
Here's another poser - sometimes they can not run the windmills because
the winds are too strong.
Lorne

Jerry Okamura...

It seems to me you can only put a wind generating facility on a mountain,
"if" you have a mountain. "If" you do not have a mountain, then you have to
put it in somewhere in the lowlands where you can capture the wind.

OP...

Another "best" place is in a pass between two mountains. The air
gets squeezed between the mountains and really speeds up there.
There is a huge wind farm at the downwind end of the Tehachipi Pass,
just west northwest of Mojave, California.

Jerry Okamura...

We have a similar phenomena here on Maui. There are two mountains, one a
whole lot bigger than the other on either side of a central valley. The
wind funnels between the two each and everyday. It seemed to me to be an
ideal place to put up a wind farm. Right now, most of the central valley is
used for farming, but that is not going to be the case for very long, if the
population of the island continues to increase, which it is doing. Then it
becomes a case where you put a windfarm on land that the people will
eventually need to live on.

Andy in Eureka, Texas

PS This year, the electricity generated by wind farms
in Texas surpassed the output of the wind farms
in California..... I bet you didn't know that.......