Did you notice the constant wind in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) this week?
Cyclists leaned into the wind, and the city roared back for some locations with its windiest week since 2022.
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Week of Dec. 30, 2024:
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Toronto: 25 km/h (windiest week since December 2022)
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London: 20 km/h
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Hamilton: 25 km/h (windiest week since December 2022)
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Kitchener-Waterloo: 23 km/h
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St. Catharines: 27 km/h (windiest week since December 2022)
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Ottawa: 23 km/h (windiest week since December 2022)
You might be wondering why December 2022 is coming up. It was the year with the major low and blizzard conditions that closed roads and made holiday travel hellish. For example, Kingston, Ont., recorded blizzard conditions from 2 p.m. on Dec. 23 until 7 p.m. on Dec. 24 in 2022.
(NOAA)
A graph of the average wind speeds for a year highlights the seasonality of wind across the region. The windiest time of year is the winter months, with the lowest wind speeds generally recorded in the summer.
For those in the snowbelt regions, it should come as no surprise that the most common wind direction is from the west.
The Arctic air mass is also creating some freezing wind chills across the region over the next several days.
Will the wind ever end?
Wind is caused by differences in air pressure, which makes air move from high pressure to low pressure. There’s a strong Arctic high-pressure system over the eastern Prairies, and a major low-pressure system developing over Newfoundland.
With approximately 100 hPa pressure difference between the two weather systems, it should come as no surprise that the wind won’t ease for a couple of days.
In fact, there’s not a relatively calm wind day forecast until Friday––that’s when the pressure gradient relaxes across Ontario. There’s a brief lull in the wind Sunday night, but by Monday, a northerly wind kicks into high gear.
From May to September, Ontario averages the lowest wind speeds of the year. During windier days and storms, wind can generate more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity for the province.
Another fascinating tidbit is that 15-20 km/h speeds are generally the minimum threshold to fly the vast majority of kites.
Also of note is that the windiest city in Canada is none other than St. John’s, N.L., with an average wind speed of more than 23 km/h. The lightest wind speed year-round goes to Kelowna, B.C., with just a mean wind speed of 5.4 km/h.