Question About Wind as it relates to fallout.

[kato13]

That might be the case and I have considered it. However the PDF does say

prevailing wind directions (DIR) are given in compass points;

It has always bugged me that wind is sometimes referred to by the source direction not the travel direction. I am 90% confident that this is travel direction however all my preconceptions support your conclusions. I will look at a little more data before I launch with the final wind directions. I can flip the wind direction 180 degrees with 2 commands if I determine that is necessary.

[kato13]

From reading definitions I guess a "Westerly" wind could mean ether from the west or towards the west. As a logical person this annoys me to no end.

Overall I agree with you that the wind should be flipped 180 degrees. Thanks for pointing that out.

I actually like this better as it bodes well for a more prosperous city in my future potential Chicago source book. Well to those who are to the east of me enjoy the extra fallout

[Cdnwolf]

The important question should be...

Should I let the Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup... before I wipe Chicago from the face of the Earth

(We all know the Toronto Maple Leafs will NEVER win the cup...lol)

[kato13]

All I have to say to that is thank goodness the Red Wings are gone in all my nuclear scenarios. I may adjust the strike near Detroit to be placed over their stadium, just to make sure.

[Graebarde]

The average wind direction for Detroit for November from 1930-1996 was WSW at 11 knots according to the pdf attached. It surprised me as well. I even thought that it might be the direction the wind came from (as winds are often reported) but the pdf does seem to support it is the direction.

I may throw in some Canadian weather station reports, for greater accuracy, if I can dig them up.

A thing to remember about these reported winds is they are "surface" winds. While they affect the fallout, the higher altitude winds above about 20K feet will be a real determining factor I think, since lower level particles will fall out more rapidly and be localized while those thrown into the higher winds will travel further. (does this make sense )

[Graebarde]

That might be the case and I have considered it. However the PDF does say
It has always bugged me that wind is sometimes referred to by the source direction not the travel direction. I am 90% confident that this is travel direction however all my preconceptions support your conclusions. I will look at a little more data before I launch with the final wind directions. I can flip the wind direction 180 degrees with 2 commands if I determine that is necessary.

NWS reports winds as direction which they come, hence Westerly comes from the west. At least in all the reports I've dealt with and submitted.

[kato13]

A thing to remember about these reported winds is they are "surface" winds. While they affect the fallout, the higher altitude winds above about 20K feet will be a real determining factor I think, since lower level particles will fall out more rapidly and be localized while those thrown into the higher winds will travel further. (does this make sense )

I does make sense but currently the math involved has to be capable to be run on a clients PC via their browser. That means I have to keep things kinda simple. Right now when I run the math for my ~2600 morrow strikes it ties up my pc for about 200 seconds. To solve this I will restrict display to a selectable 4/25(and maybe 50) of the nearest strikes to the center point of the map. This runs in under a second. More complex math would of course take more time.

Even if I don't model it perfectly, trust me you guys are going to think it is cool. Eventually I may do more complex models and store them, but that is out of scope for Version 1.0

[kato13]

NWS reports winds as direction which they come, hence Westerly comes from the west. At least in all the reports I've dealt with and submitted.

Yeah I've been aware of (and annoyed by) that fact since I was a kid. I guess when I saw direction = W, I just assumed it meant the direction of the wind is west. No biggie, it literally took me 25 seconds to fix it in the database. That is why I prefer building my site off a database as it makes recovering from an error like that almost painless.