On my way to work, I pass a U-Haul store that has a “New Hampshire” demo parked as a display. I can’t help doing a double-take…aren’t the windspeed indicators going in the wrong direction in the picture?
(or google U-haul and “New Hampshire”, it’s the first link.)
Okay. Now, isn’t the ice (or the speed lines) on the front cup of the windspeed indicator going the wrong way? Do I just lack a fundamental understanding of windspeed indicators? Or is this a backhanded ploy to keep people out of scenic, bucolic New Hampshire? “Our winds are not only greater than 200mph, they blow BACKWARDS! Hail Satan!” Or is it meant to imply that New Hampshire “sucks”?
Based on the icicles on all three cups of the anemometer, it would have to be frozen immobile for all the icicles to point in the same direction. I doubt a moving anemometer could form icicles, in any direction.
The illustration shows a “stuck” anemometer, with windblown ice formations all pointing downwind. Note that there is only ice buildup on the upwind (right) side of the bearing cap at the center of the triad. A spinning anemometer would have equal ice on all sides. Either the ice caused the anemometer to fail, or perhaps the bearings failed due to overspeed. (Yes, I know it is not a photo, I’m speculating on the artist’s intentions)
But … the two cups in the background apear to have the icicles on the correct side. The cup in front has them wrong. That’s what the OP meant. I think.
But the two cups in the back have the icicles on opposite sides! When both are looked at from the open end, one has icicles going left and the other has them going right.
Yep, that’s exactly the kind of state I want to go to on vacation! A place where it’s so cold that windomometer[sic] can’t move, and the winds on heated windomometers[sic] read 231 mph. Lovely, bloody lovely!
Yep, that’s exactly what I meant. Why show a windspeed measuring device that’s frozen solid, anyway? How can it measure windspeed if it’s frozen?
I thought they were speed lines, not icicles. You could show icicles on a house, for pete’s sake. But if they’re speed lines, the back cups are correctly shown, and the front cup is shown backwards…perhaps to visually balance the picture.
They are obviously intended to be icicles because if you look carefully, there is a snow/ice buildup on the leading (that is, the right) side of the pole to which the anemometer is attached. :smack:
And the icicles are uniformely going from right to left; that’s the direction the wind is blowing. The anemometer is frozen stuck, I would interpret that to mean.
I grew up in Maine, and it was always common knowledge that icicles at Mt. Washington grew sideways, and that the weather station up there had recorded the highest winds in America, and I believe the coldest temperatures.
Growing up, you’d always see pictures on the local news of horizontal icicles.
When I saw the picture, what immediately sprang to mind was “mt. wash weather station, frozen weather vane, horizontal icicles.”
But, I could see how someone not as familiar with the region or the weather station would be confused.
Side note: I knew a guy who was climbing Mt. Wash in the winter of '93(?) with a partner. The partner froze to death. The guy I knew banged on the weather station door/windows for half an hour before they heard him. He was severely frost bitten. Sad story.
Icicles or speed lines, I think that the artist was more trying to show that the wind was coming from the right than to display a technical accurate image.
If the wind was coming from the right, the cup that is toward us would be the one being pushed by the wind.
From your linked ad’s The Day The Wind Blew, all bolding mine…
*"On Thursday, April 12, Stephenson awoke at 4 a.m. to a much stronger and louder wind. After a quick glance of the clock, he jumped up to check the recorder. With a little converting and some quick math, he calculated an average wind speed of only 105 mph. It was clearly less than he expected and that meant one thing - **the anemometer must have been slowed by ice buildup. **
Stephenson suited up, grabbed a wooden club and headed into the wicked wind. The force was so violent and intense that as he opened the door, he was knocked to the ground. He managed to clear the ice off the anemometer and make it back inside. He flipped on the recorder and began timing the clicks from the telegraph sounder. After three tries, he verified that the wind now topped 150 mph.
<snip>
The fact that such a small observatory crew could accurately measure a wind of this magnitude, during a period of very heavy glaze icing, with the technological limits of the 30s, is a tribute to their dedication during life-threatening conditions, and their remarkable engineering and maintenance of this historical outpost."*
Clearly, ice glazing on the anemoneter is an issue and I’m guessing that’s what they were indicating, not speed or vapor lines. However, you’re right in that the directions should be toward the back of each cup varying 120 degrees from each other and not as portrayed in a single direction. One direction indicates they stopped completely and, as the story stated, even when slowed they still were clocking a speed of 105.
See the photo titled Alex McKenzie near the bottom of the page. Rime ice forms into the wind, so on the U-Haul image the wind would have been coming from the left.
And winter on top of Mt Washington is a lot of fun.
The error is common among non-scientific artists (I’m guessing the majority of them, as in all professions).
A similar but more eggregious example is in the PBS special on ancient inventions of 1st century A.D. Greek scientist Hero/Heron.
Their oft-repeated preview for the show depicts his famous steam wheel spinning in the wrong direction. It had been animated by an artist that must have been working from stills, becuse the non-animated model in the show worked fine.
