Hello and good morning to all of the weather watchers out there!

I am riding in the TOSRV this weekend, it is a bicycle ride from columbus to portsmouth on saturday and back on sunday. I would like to know how far in advance the winds can be predicted? Or maybe I can place an order, I would like to see winds out of the north at 20mph on saturday and winds out of the south at 20 mph or greater on sunday  : )   No seriously now how far can they be predicted and where can I get that info? I am an avid model plane pilot, kite flyer, sailor and bike rider and the wind plays a huge roll in my hobbies. The local weather somtimes neglects to predict wind speed and direction very far out, is this because it is unpredictable?

Any help would be greatly appreciated by myself and 2999 other cyclists this weekend.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the question.  We usually get decent windfall estimations of 2 days in advance from most standard numerical computer model output.  Here's the output for CVG:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mos/getall.pl?sta=KCVG

Winds are given in degrees....so a north wind is 360...east 90...south...180...west...270, etc.  with the final zero dropped in the output.

In this case, you're talking a North to Northeast wind on Saturday roughly 8-12 mph.  On Sunday, we don't have model output here, but I can tell you it looks to be east to southeast roughly 8-12 sustained.

We don't usually give the winds that far out because there is little interest overall.  I actually don't even usually give the winds on a daily basis unless they are gusty...but I am looking at ways to do this in the future.

Thanks for posting!

John

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John M. Gumm
Meteorologist
WKRC-TV - Local 12
jgumm@wkrc.com

If you're not too much into the meterological piece, this might be an easier find for wind speeds / directions.  Hope it helps.

Mike

http://windmapper.com/?Loc=GL

 

 

 

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