Gusty Conditions

amandstu

It is probably a technical point but I was wondering what would be the circumstances likely to make the wind gusty or steady?

I imagine it is all down to whether the lines of isobars on a chart are more or less stable but what might influence that.

With the strong winds we are having recently I have been looking at wind maps such as you can find at
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-11.61,54.13,3000

and since the lines seemed to stretch right back well into the middle of the Atlantic I said to myself "well I don' think there will be many gusts on top of the strong winds" -but the met service did give a warning for such gusts.

Is there any way we can judge for ourselves whether winds might turn out to be gusty or steady?

More generally are there any online tutorials explaining how to interpret weather charts ?

Discodog

It's a very good question & it's disappointing that no one has given you an answer. I would also like to know. I suspect that while there is even a million to one chance of snow people will be otherwise engaged.

Rougies

Here's a very simple explanation: As you go higher in the atmposhere the wind speed increases. Gusts are basically these higher level windspeeds mixing down to ground level. The more unstable the atmosphere, the more likely they will mix down to lower levels.